What  Can  Literature 
Do  For  Me? 


BY 


C.  ALPHONSO  SMITH 

Poe  Professor  of  English  in  the  University  of  Virginia 


jJ{UuU4-/€7* 


Garden  City        New  York 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 

DOUBLEDAY,    PAGE    &    COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian 


TO  MY   MOTHER 

IN  WHOSE  LETTERS  HER  CHILDREN  FIND    THE    UN- 
CONSCIOUS REFLECTION  OF  LITERATURE  THAT 
IS  LIFE  AND  LIFE  THAT 
IS  LITERATURE 

THIS  BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONATELY  DEDICATED 


261769 


CONTENTS 


I.     It  Can  Give  You  an  Outlet       .         .        3 

II.     It  Can  Keep  Before  You  the  Vision 

of  the  Ideal 35 

III.  It  Can  Give  You  a  Better  Knowledge 

of  Human  Nature         ...       68 

IV.  It  Can  Restore  the  Past  to  You     •  .     125 

V.     It  Can  Show  You  the  Glory  of  the 

Commonplace        .  .         .  154 

VI.     It  Can    Give  You    the   Mastery   of 

Your  Own  Language      .         .         .182 

Index 225 


WHAT   CAN   LITERATURE   DO  FOR  ME? 


CHAPTER  I 

It  Can  Give  You  an  Outlet 

I  CAN  remember,"  says  Abraham  Lincoln, 
"going  to  my  little  bedroom  after  hearing  the 
neighbours  talk  of  an  evening  with  my  father, 
and  spending  no  small  part  of  the  night  walking 
up  and  down  and  trying  to  make  out  what  was 
the  exact  meaning  of  their,  to  me,  dark  sayings. 
I  could  not  sleep,  though  I  often  tried  to,  when  I 
got  on  such  a  hunt  after  an  idea,  until  I  had 
caught  it;  and  when  I  thought  I  had  got  it,  I 
was  not  satisfied  until  I  had  repeated  it  over 
and  over,  until  I  had  put  it  into  language  plain 
enough,  as  I  thought,  for  any  boy  I  knew  to 
comprehend." 

Of  all  the  incidents  in  Lincoln's  life  this  has 
always  seemed  to  me  the  most  remarkable.  That 
a  boy  of  his  years  should  have  felt  so  keenly  the 
burden  of  the  inexpressible  and  should  have  spent 
sleepless  hours  in  attempting  to  free  himself  from 
this  burden  seems  at  first  glance  to  remove  Lin- 

3 


4      "WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

coin  from  the  class  of  normal  men.  We  think  of 
him  as  peculiar,  as  apart  from  other  boys,  as  not 
so  representative  as  he  would  have  been  if  he  had 
gone  straight  to  bed  and  riot  bothered  himself 
about  putting  into  definite  words  the  thoughts 
that  were  busy  in  his  brain. 

But,  explain  it  as  we  may,  the  desire  for  self- 
expression  in  clear  words  is  universal.  Lincoln 
had  it  to  a  greater  degree  than  most  boys  or  most 
men.  But  all  have  it.  We  are  often  not  conscious 
of  it,  but  as  soon  as  we  read  or  hear  our  own 
thoughts  better  expressed  than  we  could  express 
them,  we  realize  at  once  that  they  are  our  own 
thoughts  and  that  we  are  the  better  and  stronger 
for  their  adequate  expression. 

It  was  this  passion  for  self-expression  that  made 
Lincoln  one  of  the  great  spokesmen  of  his  age. 
It  enabled  him  to  say  in  many  letters  and  speeches 
what  others  were  beginning  to  feel  but  could  not 
express.  It  made  him  one  of  the  great  masters 
of  English  prose.  He  became  a  leader  of  men 
because  he  interpreted  them  to  themselves.  He 
gave  back  as  rain  what  he  received  as  mist. 

Take  his  Gettysburg  speech:  "Fourscore  and 
seven  years  ago  our  fathers  brought  forth  upon 
this  continent  a  new  nation,  conceived  in  liberty, 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME       5 

and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are 
created  equal. 

"Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war, 
testing  whether  that  nation,  or  any  nation  so 
conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can  long  endure-  We 
are  met  on  a  great  battlefield  of  that  war.  We 
have  come  to  dedicate  a  portion  of  that  field  as  a 
final  resting  place  for  those  who  here  gave  their 
lives  that  that  nation  might  live.  It  is  altogether 
fitting  and  proper  that  we  should  do  this. 

"But  in  a  larger  sense  we  cannot  dedicate,  we 
cannot  consecrate,  we  cannot  hallow  this  ground. 
The  brave  men,  living  and  dead,  who  struggled 
here,  have  consecrated  it  far  above  our  power  to 
add  or  detract.  The  world  will  little  note,  nor 
long  remember,  what  we  say  here,  but  it  can 
never  forget  what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us, 
the  living,  rather  to  be  dedicated  here  to  the 
unfinished  work  which  they  who  fought  here  have 
thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for  us 
to  be  here  dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining 
before  us,  that  from  these  honoured  dead  we  take 
increased  devotion  to  that  cause  for  which  they 
gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion;  that  we 
here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have 
died  in  vain;  that  this  nation,  under  God,  shall 


6       WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

have  a  new  birth  of  freedom,  and  that  government 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people, 
shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 

Why  is  this  literature  and  why  is  Edward 
Everett's  two-hour  speech  on  the  same  occasion 
not  literature?  Let  us  picture  the  scene:  There 
were  men,  women,  and  children  in  that  audience 
who  had  lost  brothers,  sons,  husbands,  and  fathers 
on  the  very  ground  on  which  they  now  stood. 
It  was  to  them  a  holy  place.  It  did  not  suggest 
to  their  minds  vexed  political  questions;  it  sug- 
gested memories  that  were  almost  too  sacred  for 
words.  What  these  people  needed  was  a  spokes- 
man who  should  put  into  fitting  words  the  dumb 
emotions  that  filled  every  heart,  and  this  is  what 
Lincoln  did.  He  put  their  emotions  into  language 
"plain  enough  for  any  boy  I  knew  to  compre- 
hend." But  he  did  more.  He  expressed  what 
all  of  us  feel  when  we  stand  on  a  spot  hallowed  by 
heroic  self-sacrifice.  It  may  be  a  battlefield  of 
victory  or  an  equally  glorious  battlefield  of  defeat; 
it  may  be  the  birthplace  or  the  grave  or  the  home 
of  a  great  man.  The  important  thing  for  us  is  to 
feel  anew  the  ennobling,  the  dedicating  influence 
of  the  place  itself.  The  man  who  can  put  this 
universal  feeling  into  universal  words   not  only 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME       7 

creates  universal  literature,  but  becomes  a   uni- 
versal benefactor. 

This~is  just  what  Edward  Everett  did  not  do. 
He  did  not  speak  for  the  audience,  but  to  them. 
He  entered  into  a  long  argument  as  to  the  relation 
of  the  federal  government  to  the  state  govern- 
ments. "Your  argument,"  wrote  Lincoln,  "was 
new  to  me,  and,  as  I  think,  is  one  of  the  best 
arguments  for  the  national  supremacy."  Everett 
replied:  "I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  flatter  my- 
self that  I  came  as  near  to  the  central  idea  of 
the  occasion  in  two  hours  as  you  did  in  two 
minutes." 

Now  what  Lincoln  did  for  the  Gettysburg 
audience,  the  great  poets  and  prose  writers,  the 
masters  of  literature,  have  done  for  mankind  at 
large.  A  poet  is_a  man  who  feels  as  we  feel  but 
has  the  gift  of  expression.  [  Literature  includes  all"] 
writings  that  express  for  us  what  we  consciously 
or  unconsciously  feel  the  need  of  saying  but* 
cannot. :  It  includes  the  prose  and  verse  that  find 
us  at  most  points,  that  take  our  half-formed 
thoughts,  our  suppressed  moods,  our  stifled  de- 
sires, and  lead  them  out  into  harmony  and 
completeness. 

It  is    different    with    arithmetic  or  geometry. 


8       WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

The  multiplication  table,  for  examplc^is  as  valu- 
able a  piece  of  information  as  was  ever  compressed 
into  so  small  a  space.  But  compare  it  with  these 
lines: 

So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 

The  youth  replies,  I  can! 

All  of  us  have  felt  that  when  we  have  to  do  a 
thing  we  seem  to  be  given  a  new  power  with  which 
to  do  it.  Young  people  especially,  as  Emerson 
implies  in  his  last  line,  have  had  this  experience. 
Perhaps  one  reason  is  that  when  we  know  we  must 
perform  a  certain  duty  we  stop  wasting  thought  on 
how  to  escape  it  and  so  concentrate  all  our  powers 
on  actually  doing  it.  Perhaps  also  we  had  never 
consciously  thought  of  the  reason  for  this  prin- 
ciple of  human  nature  but  had  nevertheless  been 
vaguely  conscious  that  the  principle  was  true.  >  At 
any  rate  when  we  read  Emerson's  lines  we  feel 
that  he  confirms  and  expands  and  elevates  a  mere 
impression  into  a  definite  thought,  gloriously  ex- 
pressed! He  has  turned  the  light  on  our  own 
nature  and  we  know  ourselves  better.  We  begin 
to  realize  that  whenever  "I  can"  follows  "You 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME       9 

must,"  it  is  an  evidence  not  of  weakness  but  of  the 
native  nobility  of  human  nature. 

Now  the  multiplication  table  is  just  as  true  as 
anything  ever  said  by  a  poet.  Perhaps  it  is  truer, 
but  it  is  true  in  a  different  way.  We  do  not  feel 
like  saying:  "Why,  this  table  merely  expresses 
what  I  had  already  felt  or  been  dimly  coming  to, 
but  expresses  it  with  a  beauty  and  force  and  com- 
pleteness that  give  me  a  new  sense  of  its  truth." 
No  one  ever  said  that  of  the  multiplication  table 
and  no  one  ever  will.  Emerson's  lines,  in  other  -p 
words,  meet  you  halfway;  the  multiplication  table  ' 
does  not.  Emerson's  lines  are  an  outlet  througl 
which  your  own  thought  and  feeling  flow,  and 
deepen  as  they  flow;  the  multiplication  table  has 
to  be  put  into  you  from  the  outside. 

Let  us  take  one  other  illustration:  Here  is  what 
is  called  a  right-angled  triangle* 


A 


If  you  take  the  longest  side  of  the  triangle  and 
construct  a  square  based  upon  it,  you  will  find 
that  the  square  will  be  exactly  equal  to  the  sum  of 


io     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

the  two  squares  you  could  construct  on  the  basis 
of  the  two  shorter  sides  of  the  triangle.     Thus: 


However  large  or  small  your  right-angled  tri- 
angle may  be,  this  law  holds  good.  Why?  No- 
body knows.  You  can  prove  the  truth  of  the  law 
as  often  as  you  please  by  experiment.  But  intui- 
tion would  never  have  hinted  it  to  you;  common 
sense  would  never  have  suggested  it;  a  lifetime 
of  experience  would  never  have  arrived  at  it. 
When  the  student  of  geometry  comes  to  this  great 
theorem  he  will  not  be  heard  to  say:  "That's  a 
truth  that  I  have  felt  a  hundred  times,  but  never 
saw  expressed  so  vividly  before." 

Pit  the  truth  of  the  triangle  now  against  the 
truth  of  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner.  This  great 
poem  may  seem  at  a  first  reading  to  be  a  jumble 
of  impossible  facts  set  to  haunting  music.  But  it 
is  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  is  the  story  of  a  man 
who,  by  an  act  of  cruelty  done  to  a  harmless  bird, 
came  to  feel  himself  an  outcast.  He  had  cut  all 
the  cords  of  sympathy  that  bound  him  to  the  liv- 
ing   things  about  him  —  to  man  and  bird   and 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      n 

beast.  He  was  so  miserable  that  it  was  a  small 
matter  to  him  whether  he  lived  or  died.  At 
last  his  sympathy  with  living  things  came  back  to 
him  because,  almost  without  knowing  it,  he  found 
himself  rejoicing  in  the  joy  of  the  water-snakes 
that  played  around  the  ship.  Everything  is  re- 
stored now  as  it  was,  and  the  law  of  love  is  so 
burned  into  his  soul  that,  as  long  as  he  lives, 
he  must  buttonhole  others  and  tell  them  his  ex- 
perience. 

All  the  so-called  facts  in  the  poem,  all  the  events, 
bear  directly  on  this  experience.  Did  you  never 
have  an  experience  like  it?  Whether  you  are  old 
or  young,  did  you  never  kill  or  strike  or  hurt  an 
innocent  thing  and  feel  mean  and  lonely  for  it? 
If  so,  you  have  lived  The  Ancient  Mariner  without 
knowing  it.  The  poem  is  a  part  of  yourself. 
Coleridge  might  have  written  from  your  expe- 
rience as  well  as  from  an  imaginary  mariner's. 
But  you  have  never  knowingly  or  unknowingly 
proved  by  your  own  experience  that  the  square 
of  the  longest  side  of  a  right-angled  triangle  is 
equal  to  the  squares  of  the  other  two  sides. 

Do  not  approach  literature,  then,  from  the  fact- 
side,  but  from  the  heart-side.  Strike  first  for  what 
it  has   in  common  with  yourself.     See  in  it  an 


12     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

outlet,  not  an  inlet.  Unfortunately  it  is  still 
taught  —  you  may  be  sure  not  learned  —  from 
the  fact-side.  I  have  before  me  three  editions  of 
The  Ancient  Mariner.  They  all  have  long  intro- 
ductions telling  the  facts  about  Coleridge's  life, 
when  and  where  the  poem  was  written,  when  and 
where  it  was  added  to,  what  kind  of  line  and 
stanza  the  poet  used,  what  book  or  books  he 
probably  read  before  writing  the  poem,  but  not  a 
word  as  to  what  the  poem  has  in  it  for  you  and  me 
or  of  you  and  me.  Now  the  life  of  a  poet,  the 
date  of  his  work,  the  kind  of  metre  employed,  all 
have  something  to  do  with  a  poem.  But  they 
are  secondary,  not  primary.  Thejirstjthing^tojlo 
is  to  find  yourself  in  the  poem  itself.  When  you 
do  this,  when  the~poem  means  something  to  you, 
when  you  see  in  it  a  reflection  or  extension  of 
yourself,  when  it  becomes  a  real  outlet  for  you, 
you  will  want  to  know  something  about  the 
writer.  Seek  first,  however,  yourself  in  the  poem,\ 
and  all  these  other  things  will  be  added  unto  you. 
You  can  no  more  learn  literature  from  the  history 
of  literature  than  you  can  learn  arithmetic  from 
the  history  of  arithmetic. 

If  you  could  summon  before  you  the  makers 
of  literature  they  would  tell  you  that  they  found 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      13 

their  inspiration  not  in  introductions  to  great 
books,  not  in  discussions  of  great  books,  not  in 
learned  notes  about  great  books,  but  in  great 
books  themselves,  They  found  themselves  in 
these  books,  for  these  books  were  a  voice  from 
within,  not  a  fact  from  without.  Listen  to  some 
of  the  men  who  have  put  their  experience  on 
record : 

Daniel  Defoe's  Robinson  Crusoe,  Walter  Scott's 
Ivanhoe,  and  Thomas  Carlyle's  French  Revolution 
are  very  different  sorts  of  books.  But  they  have 
one  thing  in  common:  they  grip_ human  life  with 
the  open  hand.  Here  is  what  these  books  meant 
to  a  famous  Scotch  writer  in  his  boyhood  and 
young  manhood:  "I  have  cause,"  said  Robert 
Chambers,  who  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Walter 
Scott,  "to  revere  the  name  of  Defoe,  who  reached 
his  hand  down  through  a  century  and  a  half  to 
wipe  away  bitter  tears  from  my  childish  eyes.  The 
going  back  to  school  was  always  a  dreadful  woe 
to  me,  casting  its  black  shadow  far  into  the  latter 
part  of  my  brief  holidays.  I  have  had  my  share 
of  suffering  and  sorrow  since,  like  other  men,  but 
I  have  seldom  felt  so  absolutely  wretched,  as 
when,  a  little  boy,  I  was  about  to  exchange  my 
present   homelife  for   the   hardships   and   uncon- 


i4     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

genialities  of  school.  .  .  .  And  yet,  I  protest, 
I  had  but  to  take  up  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  in  a 
very  few  minutes  I  was  out  of  all  thought  of  the 
approaching  calamity.  ...  I  had  travelled 
over  a  thousand  leagues  of  sea;  I  was  in  my  snug, 
well-fortified  cave,  with  the  ladder  upon  the  right 
side  of  it,  'so  that  neither  man  nor  beast  could  get 
at  me,'  with  my  half-a-dozen  muskets  loaded, 
and  my  powder  distributed  into  separate  parcels, 
so  that  not  even  a  thunderbolt  should  do  me  any 
irreparable  injury.  Or,  if  not  quite  so  secure,  I 
was  visiting  my  summer  plantation  among  my 
goats  and  corn,  or  shooting,  in  the  still,  astonished 
woods,  birds  of  marvellous  beauty;  or  lying  upon 
my  stomach  upon  the  top  of  the  hill,  watching 
through  my  spyglass  the  savages  putting  to  sea, 
and  not  displeased  to  find  myself  once  more  alone 
in  my  own  little  island. 

"During  that  agonizing  period  which  inter- 
vened between  my  proposal  of  marriage  by  letter 
to  Jemima  Anne,  and  my  reception  of  her  reply, 
how  should  I  have  ever  kept  myself  alive,  save 
for  the  chivalrous  aid  of  the  Black  Knight  in 
Ivanhoe  ?  To  him,  mainly,  assisted  by  Rebecca, 
and  (I  am  bound  to  say)  by  that  scoundrel  Brian 
de  Bois  Guilbcrt,  are  my  obligations  due,  that  I 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     15 

did  not  —  through  the  extremities  of  despair  and 
hope  suffered  during  that  interval  —  become  a 
drivelling  idiot. 

"When  her  answer  did  arrive  —  in  the  negative 
—  what  was  it  which  preserved  me  from  the 
noose,  the  razor,  or  the  stream,  but  Mr.  Carlyle's 
French  Revolution  ?.  In  the  woes  of  poor  Louis 
Capet  I  forgot  my  own.  .  .  .  Who,  having 
a  grateful  heart,  can  forget  these  things,  or  deny 
the  blessedness  of  books?" 

Plato  is  usually  thought  to  be  very  dry  reading. 
There  is  an  impression  that  he  wrote  only  for 
specialists  in  Greek  or  philosophy.  The  truth  is 
that  he  wrote  for  everybody,  young  and  old, 
learned  and  unlearned.  Try  his  Phcsdrus,  or 
Symposium,  or  Phcsdo,  or  Crito,  especially  the 
last,  in  Jowett's  translation.  Four  more  fascinat- 
ing dialogues  were  never  written  or  imagined. 
To  find  yourself  in  these  or  in  any  one  of  them 
will  be  the  beginning  of  a  lifelong  education  in 
wonderful  thinking  and  wonderful  expression. 
Here  is  what  J.  A.  Symonds,  who  became  a  great 
interpreter  of  Greek  thought,  says  of  the  influence 
of  Plato  upon  him  when  he  was  a  schoolboy  at 
Harrow:  "My  hostess,  a  Mrs.  Bain,  who  lived  in 
Regent's  Park,  treated  me  to  a  comedy  at  the 


1 6     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Haymarket.  I  forget  what  the  play  was.  When 
we  returned  from  the  play  I  went  to  bed  and 
began  to  read  my  Cary's  Plato.  It  so  happened 
that  I  stumbled  on  the  Phtxdrus.  I  read  on  and 
on,  till  I  reached  the  end.  Then  I  began  the 
Symposium;  and  the  sun  was  shining  on  the 
shrubs  outside  the  ground  floor  on  which  I  slept 
before  I  shut  the  book  up.  I  have  related  these 
unimportant  details  because  that  night  was  one 
of  the  most  important  nights  of  my  life.  .  .  . 
Here  in  the  Phcedrus  and  the  Symposium  I  dis- 
covered the  revelation  I  had  been  waiting  for, 
the  consecration  of  a  long-cherished  idealism.  It 
was  just  as  though  the  voice  of  my  own  soul  spoke 
to  me  through  Plato.  Harrow  vanished  into  un- 
reality. I  had  touched  solid  ground.  Here  was 
the  poetry,  the  philosophy  of  my  own  enthusiasm 
expressed  with  all  the  magic  of  unrivalled 
style." 

Edmund  Burke  was  probably  the  greatest  orator 
that  ever  lived.  Certainly  no  orator  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking race  was  his  equal.  How  much  he 
owed  to  inborn  talent  and  how  much  to  training 
can  never  be  told.  But  his  own  opinion  was  +hat 
the  study  of  Cicero  first  waked  his  dormant  power.: 
to  activity.     I  was  only  a  boy,  said  Burke,  but 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     17 

the  great  Roman  became  at  once  "the  model  on 
which  I  laboured  to  form  my  own  character  in 
eloquence,  in  policy,  in  ethics,  and  in  philosophy." 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  the  author  of  the  greatest 
American  novel,  used  to  say  that  his  awakening 
came  from  the  reading  in  early  boyhood  of  Spen- 
ser's Faerie  Queene  and  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress. "Unquestionably,"  says  Walter  Besant, 
the  popular  English  novelist,  "the  book  which 
most  seized  my  imagination  was  the  immortal 
Pilgrim's  Progress.  It  still  seems  to  me  the  book 
which  has  influenced  the  minds  of  Englishmen 
more  than  any  other  outside  the  covers  of  the 
Bible." 

"Shakespeare,"  says  Robert  Louis  Stevenson, 
the  author  of  Kidnapped,  "has  served  me  best. 
Few  living  friends  have  had  upon  me  an  influence 
so  strong  for  good  as  Hamlet  or  Rosalind.  The 
next  book,  in  order  of  time,  to  influence  me,  was 
the  New  Testament,  and  in  particular  the  Gospel 
According  to  St.  Matthew.  I  believe  it  would 
startle  and  move  any  one  if  they  could  make  a 
certain  effort  of  imagination  and  read  it  freshly 
like  a  book,  not  droningly  and  dully  like  a  portion 
of  the  Bible." 

You  will  notice  that  Stevenson  does  not  refer 


1 8     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

to  a  particular  passage  or  verse  or  chapter  from 
the  Bible;  he  refers  to  a  whole  book.  He  evidentlv 
read  the  Bible  not  by  fragments,  but  by  books. 
No  masterpiece  of  world-literature  has  suffered 
so  much  by  piecemeal  reading  as  the  Bible.  On 
Sundays  it  is  read  aloud  by  select  chapters  or 
parts  of  chapters,  and  expounded  by  select  verses; 
in  Sunday-schools  it  is  taught  with  an  equal  dis- 
regard of  book  divisions;  and  even  in  home  study 
and  private  reading  the  same  hop-skip-and-jump 
method  is  generally  followed.  Suppose  we  should 
read  Shakespeare  the  same  way  —  one  day  a  few 
passages  from  Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  next  day  an 
act  from  Hamlet,  the  third  day  a  scene  from  The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  It  has  been  practically 
overlooked  that  each  book  of  the  Bible,  like  each 
play  of  Shakespeare,  is  a  unit  in  itself.  The 
authors  of  these  books  wrote  not  because  they 
had  to  say  something  but  because  they  had  some- 
thing to  say;  when  they  had  said  it  they  stopped, 
or  began  another  book.  Try  reading  each  book 
at  a  sitting  and  as  if  you  had  to  furnish  a  subtitle 
for  each,  giving  the  main  content  of  each  book 
as  you  understand  it.  Thus,  Job,  or  Piety  without 
Prosperity;  Ecclesiastes,  or  Prosperity  without  Piety. 
Ecclesiastes  recalls  another  writer  who  recognized 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     19 

the  book  units  in  the  Bible.  "There  is  one  im- 
mortal work  that  moves  me  still  more,"  says 
Rider  Haggard,  whom  we  do  not  think  of  as  owing 
much  to  the  Bible,  "a  work  that  utters  all  the 
world's  yearning  anguish  and  disillusionment  in 
one  sorrow-laden  and  bitter  cry,  and  whose  stately 
music  thrills  like  the  voice  of  pines  heard  in  the 
darkness  of  a  midnight  gale;  and  that  is  the  book 
of  Ecclesiastes." 

Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton,  the  well-known  writer 
on  art,  found  a  lasting  delight  in  the  poetry  of 
Walter  Scott  because  he  and  Scott  were  both 
lovers  of  lakes,  hills,  and  streams.  "I  began  with 
the  poems,  and  read  them  so  often  that  I  almost 
knew  them  by  heart  before  I  had  read  a  single 
page  of  the  prose  tales.  The  Lady  of  the  Lake  was 
my  especial  favourite,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
my  early  enthusiasm  for  that  delightful  poem 
implanted  in  me  a  love  for  beautiful  lakes  with 
romantic  islands  in  them  which  had  practical 
consequences  afterward.  Even  to  this  day  these 
feelings  are  as  lively  in  me  as  ever,  so  that  nothing 
in  the  world  seems  to  me  so  completely  delightful 
as  a  lake  if  one  has  a  sailing-boat  to  wander  over  it. 
Scott,  too,  had  the  same  love  for  hills  and  streams 
that  I  had  imbibed  from  nature  in  my  youth,  and 


20     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

in  his  narratives  of  adventure  he  suited  my  temper 
so  exactly,  that  to  read  him  was  a  complete  satis- 
faction, without  any  drawback  whatever.  I  am 
still  a  reader  of  Scott,  and  never  appreciated  the 
qualities  of  Ivanhoe  so  completely  as  on  reading 
that  masterpiece  last  year.  Of  all  authors  it  is 
Scott  who  has  given  me  the  greatest  sum  of  pleas- 
ure, and  that  of  a  very  healthy  kind." 

Hamerton's  own  preferences  remind  us  that  it 
will  not  do  to  lay  down  hard  and  fast  rules  for 
( reading.  The  main  thing  is  to  find  the  writer  or 
writers,  the  book  or  books",  that  enrich  your  think- 
ing  by  interpreting  it.  Sometimes  the  right  book 
startles  or  warns  you,  sometimes  it  takes  issue 
squarely  with  you,  sometimes  it  reveals  new 
powers  latent  in  you,  but  in  every  case  it  reveals 
something  in  common  with  you,  and  on  this 
common  basis  you  rise  toward  its  level.  One 
would  think  that  if  Hamerton  loved  lakes,  streams, 
and  hills,  he  might  have  found  a  congenial  spirit 
in  the  gre^t  nature  poet,  William  Wordsworth. 
"But  there  was  something  in  Wordsworth,"  says 
Hamerton,  "that  I  found  repellent,  perhaps  his 
belief  in  his  own  moral  and  intellectual  excel- 
lence." When  our  own  nature  poet,  William 
Cullcn  Bryant,  first  read  Wordsworth,  he  said: 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     21 

"A  thousand  springs  seemed  to  gush  up  at  once 
into  my  heart,  and  the  face  of  nature  changed  of  a 
sudden  into  a  strange  freshness  and  life."  He  had 
found  a  mind  greater  than  his  own,  but  thoroughly 
in  sympathy  with  him.  Like  had  met  like.  It 
was  Lincoln  and  the  Gettysburg  audience 
again. 

"When  I  was  fifteen,"  says  W.  T.  Stead,  the 
great  journalist  who  went  down  with  the  Titanic, 
"Dicks's  Shakespeare  was  published  in  penny 
weekly  numbers.  I  had  never  read  any  of  his 
plays,  and  as  I  have  never  to  this  day  witnessed 
the  performance  of  any  stage  play,  I  was  then  in 
absolute  ignorance  of  what  Shakespeare  meant. 
The  first  number  contained  two  plays,  Hamlet  and 
Othello,  at  a  halfpenny  each.  I  shall  never  forget 
the  shock  —  the  bewildering  shock  —  which  I 
received  from  the  last  scene  in  Hamlet.  So  in- 
variably had  novelists,  and  even  romantic  poets 
like  Scott,  brought  their  heroes  and  heroines 
happily  together  before  they  left  the  stage,  that 
it  was  some  time  before  I  could  realize  that  in 
Hamlet  all  was  different.  The  death  of  Ophelia 
had  startled  me;  that  was  irretrievable,  no  doubt; 
but  Hamlet  might  still  be  saved.  But  when  at 
last  death  swept  the  board,  and  the  curtain  fell  on 


22     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

a  universal  shambles,  I  was  dazed,  angry,  and 
incredulous.  I  read  the  play  over  again,  not  for 
the  story  this  time;  and  then  read  Othello.  It  was 
one  of  the  turning-points  of  my  life.  I  was  fasci- 
nated. Every  week,  until  the  series  was  com- 
plete, I  devoured  the  two  new  plays  contained 
in  each  numbcr.(f_Thcy  enormously  widened  the 
horizon  of  life;  they  added  new  and  vivid  colour  to 
existence/!  and  they  intensified  my  perception  of 
the  tragic  issues  of  love  and  of  death  that  are 
bound  up  in  every  human  heart.  But  that 
was  not  all;  Shakespeare  was  to  me  the  key 
to  all  literature."  He  was  the  key  to  all  lit- 
erature because  he  was  the  key  to  Mr.  Stead's 
own  heart. 

But  I  like  to  consider  the  service  that  great 
writers  have  rendered  to  mankind  at  large,  and  not 
merely  to  those  who  were  to  become  great  writers 
themselves.  The  Gettysburg  speech  has  doubtless 
helped  thousands  of  orators  and  would-be  orators, 
but  it  has  helped  tens  of  thousands  of  people  who 
are  not  orators  and  who  have  never  given  expres- 
sion to  their  indebtedness  by  tongue  or  pen.  The 
greatest  service  of  literature  has  been  in  behalf, 
not  of  professional  writers  and  speakers,  but  of 
those  who  feel  the  need  of  a  spokesman  all  the 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      23 

more  keenly  because  they  lack  the  ability  them- 
selves to  voice  their  own  feelings.  Great  singers 
help  other  singers,  but  the  pleasure  that  they  give 
to  those  who  are  themselves  unable  to  sing  is  many 
times  greater  than  the  service  rendered  to  the  few 
professionals.  Most  of  us  are  songs  without  words, 
only  the  few  know  the  words,  but  all  feel  the  thrill 
when  the  words  are  sung.  It  may  be  sorrow,  or 
joy,  or  mere  perplexity,  or  dull  indifference,  but, 
whatever  it  is,  it  craves  expression. 

A  poor  woman,  whose  childhood  had  been  the 
only  happy  period  of  her  life,  was  struggling  to 
make  an  honest  living  for  herself,  but  had  almost 
lost  hope.  She  had  moved  to  a  little  village  in  a 
far-off  frontier  state  and  was  supporting  herself 
by  taking  in  washing.  A  preacher  who  had  heard 
of  her  condition  called  and  left  some  religious 
tracts.  A  few  weeks  later  he  called  again  and 
noticed  a  great  change.  "Before  I  entered  the 
house,"  he  said,  "I  detected  a  neatness  and  order- 
liness in  the  little  front  yard  that  I  had  not 
observed  before.  The  woman  herself  seemed  a. 
different  person.  Instead  of  listlessness  and  de- 
spair there  was  hope  and  good  cheer  in  her  voice  as 
she  bade  me  enter.  I  asked  her  which  one  of  the 
tracts  she  had  found  most  helpful.     'Oh,'  she  re- 


a  |     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

plied,  'I  haven't  read  any  of  them  yet.     There 

•  hat  I   have  been  reading  till  I   kncr- 
heart,'  "  and  she  pointed  to  a  newspaper  clipr     g 
which  she  had  pasted  on  the  wall  just  above  her 
washtub.     The   clipping   contained    Longfell: 
poem  Maidenhood.     She  had  found  it  in  a  m      - 
paper  which  had  been  used  to  wrap  soiled  clothing 
which  had  been  sent  to  her  to  wash.    The  thoughts 
seemed  to  be  her  own  but  fuller  and  sweeter. 
whole  poem  seemed  to  have  been  written  by  I 
self  in  some  mood  of  exaltation  that  had   : 
become  but  a  memory.     It  recalled  her  ear/ 
made  clear  to  her  the  meaning  of  her  early  life, 
and  thus  restored  her  early  ideals. 

It  is  said  that  Longfellow  was  once  dri- 
closed  carriage  near  -tie,  England,  when  the 

carriage  was  suddenly  halted  and  the  door  violently 
opened.  Looking  out  the  poet  saw  that  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  group  of  coal-begrimed  miners.  His 
first  thought  was  that  he  was  about  to  be  robbed. 
'*I=  this  Mr.  Longfellow?"  asked  one  of  the  men. 
"  It  is,"  was  the  reply.  "  Well,  sir,  some  of  us  heard 
that  you  were  to  pass  here  about  this  time  and  we 
got  permission  to  come  up  out  of  the  mine  and  see 
you.  We  just  want  to  shake  your  hand  and  - 
'God  bless  the  man  that  wrote  The  Psalm  of  Life. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     25 

There  was  a  time  when  men  did  not  feel  the 
burden  of  the  inexpressible,  but  that  was  before 
the  dawn  of  civilization.  They  lived  a  primitive 
life,  and  emotion  was  so  simple  that  it  found  a 
sufficient  outlet  in  a  shout,  a  groan,  a  laugh,  a  cry, 
a  sigh,  a  gesture,  or  the  movement  of  the  whole 
body.  This  is  true  to-day  of  infants  and  savages. 
The  Botocudos  of  South  America  have  but  one 
word  to  express  both  song  and  dance,  and  the  only 
song  they  sing  on  great  occasions  is 

Calani-a-a 
Calani-a-ha. 

This  they  repeat  over  and  over  again.  Nobody 
knows  what  it  means,  but  it  evidently  means  very 
little  of  anything.  The  Botocudos  like  it,  how- 
ever, because  it  is  the  satisfying  expression  of  a 
simple  emotion. 

Now,  however,  emotion  has  become  very  com- 
plex, and  expression  has  not  kept  pace  with  it. 
Almost  all  modern  poets  have  some  reference  to 
the  relief  that  we  feel  in  expression.  Shakespeare, 
whom  nothing  seems  to  have  escaped,  says  that 
words  are  "windy  attorneys  to  their  client  woes." 
That  is  a  very  original  way  of  saying  that  men 
need  the  services  of  competent  lawyers  for  the 


26     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

same  reason  that  they  need  the  services  of  com- 
petent words,  namely,  to  help  them  out  of  trouble. 
Again,  when  Macduff,  in  Macbeth,  is  told  that  his 
wife  and  babies  have  been  murdered,  Shakespeare 
makes  Malcolm  say  to  him: 

Give  sorrow  words  :  the  grief  that  does  not  speak 
Whispers  the  o'er-fraught  heart,  and  bids  it  break. 

In  his  famous  poem  called  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality.    Wordsworth  says: 

To  me  alone  there  came  a  thought  of  grief, 
^"timely  utterance  gave  that  thought  relief, 
And  I  again  am  strong. 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  goes  a  step  further.  He 
reminds  us  that  however  pathetic  a  man's  life  may 
have  been,  if  that  man  succeeded  in  expressing 
his  life  in  poetry,  if  he  was  able  to  tell  the  mystery 
and  the  tragedy  of  it  all  to  others,  he  had  his 
reward.  The  deeper  grief  is  the  grief  of  "the 
voiceless": 

Nay,  grieve  not  for  the  dead  alone 

Whose  song  has  told  their  hearts'  sad  story  — 

Weep  for  the  voiceless,  who  have  known 
The  cross  without  the  crown  of  glory! 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      27 

Emerson  expresses  it  in  prose:  "For  all  men  live 
by  truth,  and  stand  in  need  of  expression.  In 
love,  in  art,  in  avarice,  in  politics,  in  labour,  in 
games,  we  study  to  utter  our  painful  secret.  The 
man  is  only  half  himself,  the  other  half  is  his 
expression." 

But  the  strongest  statement  of  the  principle  is 
given  by  a  man  who  learned  it  through  bitter 
experience,  experience  which  he  could  never  have 
endured  if  he  had  not  had  the  gift  of  expression. 
Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow,  says  Thomas  De  Quincey, 
are  three.  He  means  that  grief  (your  grief  and 
mine)  has  three  stages  of  intensity.  He  thinks 
of  these  three  stages  as  three  realms  or  kingdoms 
presided  over  by  our  three  "Ladies  of  Sorrow." 
The  eldest,  the  Madonna,  is  named  Mater  Lachry- 
marum,  Our  Lady  of  Tears.  She  represents  the 
kind  of  grief  that  finds  easy,  natural  expression  in 
tears.  The  second  Sister  is  called  Mater  Sus- 
piriorum,  Our  Lady  of  Sighs.  She  represents  the 
grief  that  is  too  deep  for  tears  but  that  finds  a 
partial  outlet  in  sighs. 

"But  the  third  Sister,  who  is  also  the  youngest 
—  hush!  whisper  whilst  we  talk  of  her!  Her 
kingdom  is  not  large,  or  else  no  flesh  should  live; 
but  withL.  that  kingdom  all  power  is  hers.     Her 


28     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

head,  turreted  like  that  of  Cybele,  rises  almost 
beyond  the  reach  of  sight.  She  droops  not;  and 
her  eyes,  rising  so  high,  might  be  hidden  by  dis- 
tance. But,  being  what  they  are,  they  cannot  be 
hidden;  through  the  treble  veil  of  crape  which  she 
wears,  the  fierce  light  of  a  blazing  misery,  that 
rests  nor  for  matins  or  for  vespers,  for  noon  of  day 
or  noon  of  night,  for  ebbing  or  for  flowing  tide, 
may  be  read  from  the-  very  ground.  She  is  the 
defter  of  God.  She  also  is  the  mother  of  lunacies, 
and  the  suggestress  of  suicides.  Deep  lie  the 
roots  of  her  power;  but  narrow  is  the  nation  that 
she  rules.  For  she  can  approach  only  those  in 
whom  a  profound  nature  has  been  upheaved  by 
central  convulsions;  in  whom  the  heart  trembles 
and  the  brain  rocks  under  conspiracies  of  tempest 
from  without  and  tempests  from  within.  Ma- 
donna moves  with  uncertain  steps,  fast  or  slow, 
but  still  with  tragic  grace.  Our  Lady  of  Sighs 
creeps  timidly  and  stealthily.  But  this  youngest 
Sister  moves  with  incalculable  motions,  bounding, 
and  with  tiger's  leaps.  She  carries  no  key;  for, 
though  coming  rarely  amongst  men,  she  storms  all 
doors  at  which  she  is  permitted  to  enter  at  all. 
And  her  name  is  Mater  Te?iebraru??i,  Our  Lady  of 
Darkness." 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      29 

Just  as  grief  is  relieved  by  expression,  so  joy  is 
heightened.  This  is  what  Tennyson  means  in  the 
following  familiar  lines.     The  italics  are  my  own: 

Break,  break,  break, 

On  thy  cold  gray  stones,  0  Sea! 
And  I  would  that  my  tongue  could  utter 
The  thoughts  that  arise  in  me. 

O  well  for  the  fisherman's  boy, 

That  he  shouts  with  his  sister  at  play! 

O  well  for  the  sailor  lad, 

That  he  sings  in  his  boat  on  the  bay! 

Why  does  Tennyson  envy  the  sea?  Because  the 
sea  can  voice  its  grief.  Like  the  wind  it  has  a 
thousand  moods  but  a  voice  for  each.  The  sea 
and  the  wind,  therefore,  have  from  the  earliest 
times  been  regarded  by  poets  as  possessors  of  a 
peculiar  joy  and  freedom.  Why  is  it  well  with  the 
fisherman's  boy  and^the  sailor  lad?  Because  in 
them,  too,  there  is  perfect  correspondence  between  \ 
feeling  and  expression.  The  shout  and  the  song 
are  the  adequate  outlets  of  simple  joy,  just  as  the 
roar  of  the  sea  against  its  rocky  shore  is  the 
adequate  voice  of  an  oceanic  grief, 

Macaulay  has  said:  "As  civilization  advances, 
poetry  almost  necessarily  declines."  Do  we  not 
see  now  that  the  reverse  is  true?     Is  it  not  evident 


30     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

that  as  civilization  advances,  our  thoughts,  our 
feelings,  our  moods,  our  ideals  all  become  more  and 
more  complex  and  therefore  stand  more  in  need 
of  literature  to  express  them?  One  might  as  well 
say  that  as  civilization  advances,  inventions  nec- 
essarily decline.  Inventions  increase  as  our  needs 
increase.  It  is  otherwise  with  discoveries.  A 
discovery  may  be  made  accidentally  and  may 
have  no  relation  to  human  need,  as,  for  example, 
the  discovery  of  the  mechanism  of  a  fly's  eye. 
But  an  invention  always  presupposes  a  felt  want. 
So  does  poetry.  It  satisfies  fir?t  a  want  in  the  soul 
of  the  writer,  and  if  this  be  a  national  want,  the 
poem  becomes  a  national  possession;  if  it  be  a  uni- 
versal want,  the  poem  becomes  a  universal  pos- 
session. The  Star-Spangled  Banner  is  an  example 
of  the  first,  Hamlet  of  the  second.  As  civiliza- 
tion advances,  the  demand  for  poetry  will  increase, 
though  the  supply  may  not  equal  the  demand, 
\,  The  poets  then  have  done  more  than  all  others 
to  restore  the  equilibrium  between  feeling  and 
expression.  They  have  not  succeeded  —  they  will 
never  succeed.  There  are  emotions  and  moods 
that  are  so  fleeting  or  so  complex  or  so  far  from 
the  surface  that  they  defy  the  photography  of 
words.     The    poet    can    only    approximate,    but 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     31 

there  is  balm  and  uplift  in  the  approximation.  If 
he  felt  completely  satisfied  with  his  work,  stagna- 
tion would  result,  but  his  ideal  recedes  and 
beckons  to  him  as  it  recedes.  And  so  with  the 
reader.  An  ideal  overtaken  is  no  longer  an  ideal. 
But  when  it  is  nearly  overtaken  it  seems  suddenly 
to  loom  larger  and  fairer,  and  thus  to  suggest  a 
higher  and  more  distant  ideal.  Perhaps  Milton 
preferred  Paradise  Regained  to  Paradise  Lost  be- 
cause he  came.nearer  to  doing  what  he  wanted  to 
do  in  Paradise  Regained,  while  in  Paradise  Lost 
there  was  a  wider  space  between  what  he  did  and 
what  he  hoped  to  do. 

^But  whatever  you  read  remember  that  it  is  your 
own  personality  that  you  are  trying  to  unlocks 
The  poem  or  story  or  book,  if  it  is  the  right  one, 
should  seem  a  sort  of  extension  of  yourself.  You 
must  carry,  therefore,  a  large  share  of  self-confi- 
dence and  self-respect  into  your  reading.  You 
are  looking  for  an  outlet  of  your  own  soul  rather 
than  the  inflow  of  another's.  As  a  general  thing 
you  will  find  such  an  outlet  in  works  written  near 
your  own  time.  But  when  the  process  of  finding 
yourself  has  begun,  you  will  be  carried  through 
many  centuries  and  into  many  lands. 

As  wide  and  as  varied,  however,  as  the  domain 


32     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

of  literature  seems,  the  greatest  works  can  be 
divided  into  only  two  classes.  You  often  hear  it 
said  that  a  man  or  an  event  is  famous  in  "song  and 
story."  Now  this  expression,  "song  and  story," 
really  means  the  whole  realm  of  literature.  It 
includes  (i)  lyric  poetry,  that  is,  the  short  poems 
that  men  in  their  joy  or  grief  used  to  sing,  and  (2) 
the  longer  works,  prose  or  verse,  that  tell  a  story. 
The  other  kinds  of  literature  are  modifications  or 
combinations  of  these  two. 

The  two  best  small  collections  of  English  lyric 
poems  or  song-literature  are  Palgrave's  Golden 
Treasury,  with  Additional  Poems  to  the  End  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  and  The  Oxford  Book  of  English 
Verse  1250-iQOO  chosen  and  edited  by  Sir  Arthur 
Quiller-Couch.  The  first  is  the  better  known, 
but  the  second  has  the  advantage  of  building  on 
the  first,  and  contains  more  than  twice  as  many 
poems.  You  are  not  expected  to  like  every  poem 
in  cither  of  these  collections,  but  if  you  will  start 
with  Burns  or  Campbell  or  Cowper  or  Scott  or 
Tennyson  you  will  be  pretty  sure  to  find  a  friend 
whose  comradeship  will  mean  a  new  era  in  your 
life.  To  these  volumes  should  be  added  also  a 
good  collection  of  American  short  poems,  such  as 
is    found    in   Augustus    White    Long's    American 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      33 

Poems  1776-1900  or  in  Edmund  Clarence  Sted- 
man's  American  Anthology  1787-1900.  You  will 
find  in  either  of  these  volumes  every  American 
poem  that  in  school  or  home  has  made  itself  a  part 
of  the  lyric  heritage  of  the  American  people. 

In  story-literature,  the  literature  that  tells  a 
tale,  the  best  poems  are  those  by  Tennyson  and 
Longfellow.  Try  Locksley  Hall  and  Enoch  Arden 
by  Tennyson;  Evangeline,  Hiawatha,  the  Court- 
ship of  Miles  Standish,  and  Paul  Revere' \s  Ride  by 
Longfellow.  In  short  prose  tales  America  leads. 
The  American  short  story  is  known  all  over  the 
world  for  the  skill  with  which  it  is  told  and  the 
human  appeal  of  its  content.  In  fact  French  and 
American  writers  have  brought  the  short  story  to 
such  perfection  that  it  has  been  proposed  to  join 
the  two  words  with  a  hyphen  and  thus  make  a 
visible  distinction  between  the  short-story  and  the 
story  that  is  merely  short.  Many  excellent  col- 
lections of  short  stories,  American  and  foreign, 
have  been  made.  Among  them  may  be  men- 
tioned The  Short-Story:  Specimens  Illustrating  Its 
Development,  by  Professor  Brander  .Matthews, 
which  contains  stories  from  many  lands,  and  The 
Best  American  Tales,  by  Professor  William  P. 
Trent  and  Professor  John  B.  Henneman.     From 


34     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

the  charm  of  these  short  stones  you  will  be  led  to 
the  longer  stories  which  we  call  novels  and  dramas 
and  epic  poems. 

Whenever  you  get  really  interested  in  a  great 
piece  of  literature  one  revelation  will  surely  come 
to  you.  You  will  find  that  the  element  of  beauty 
is  never  lacking.  You  will  find  it  hard  to  say 
whether  it  is  in  the  thought  or  in  the  language  or 
in  the  suggestions  prompted  by  both.  But  there 
it  is.  See  deep  enough  or  high  enough  or  wide 
enough  and  you  see  beauty.  This  is  the  greatest 
lesson  that  art  has  to  teach,  and  it  is  a  lesson 
taught  by  every  literary  masterpiece  whether  it 
be  one  line  or  a  whole  book. 

Literature,  then,  is  within  you.  The  masters 
only  bring  it  out.  It  is  to  your  soul  that  they  cry 
"Open  Sesame."  Whenever  you  say  of  a  poem 
or  story,  "That's  what  I  have  dimly  felt  before  — 
or  felt  a  thousand  times  before  —  but  could  never 
say,"  freedom  through  expression  has  begun.  The 
masters  have  found  you  and  you  have  begun  to 
find  yourself. 


CHAPTER  II 

7/  Can  Keep  Before  You  the  Vision  of  the  Ideal 

IT  IS  said  that  when  Thorwaldsen,  the  great 
Danish  sculptor,  unveiled  his  statue  of  Christ 
he  was  seen  to  weep.  His  friends  who  had 
come  to  congratulate  him  were  astonished  to  hear 
him  say:  "My  genius  is  decaying."  "What  do 
you  mean?"  they  asked.  "This  statue,"  he  re- 
plied, "is  the  first  of  my  works  that  I  have  ever 
felt  completely  satisfied  with.  Till  now  my  ideal 
has  always  been  far  beyond  what  I  could  execute, 
but  it  is  so  no  longer.  I  can  never  create  a  great 
work  of  art  again."  The  principle  that  the  great 
artist  here  expressed  is  true  for  all  time.  ,  When- 
ever a  man  catches  up  with  his  ideal,  whenever  he 
is  completely  satisfied  with  his  work,  he  is  doomed/]/ 
He  cannot  climb  higher  because  he  cannot  imagine 
a  height  beyond  that  which  he  has  already  at- 
tained. He  cannot  reach  another  round  on  his 
ladder  because  for  him  there  are  no  other  rounds. 
He  must  either  stand  still  or  descend,  and  standing 
still  is  a  kind  of  descent. 

35 


36     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Robert  Browning  has  written  a  great  poem 
about  Andrea  del  Sarto,  the  man  who  was  called 
"  the  faultless  painter."  Andrea  says  that  he  does 
not  have  to  make  first  sketches  or  outlines  before 
beginning  a  new  painting  —  all  that  is  past.  He 
has  become  so  skilful  with  his  brush  that  to 
imagine  is  to  achieve.  He  can  put  "perfectly" 
upon  the  canvas  any  picture  that  comes  into  his 
mind.  Is  such  a  man  to  be  envied?  Andrea's 
friends  think  so,  but  Andrea  himself  envies  his 
brother  artists  whose  ideals  march  always  in 
advance  of  actual  achievement.  They  have  some- 
thing to  strive  for,  something  that  eludes  them, 
but  is  always  beckoning  to  them.  Andrea  sums 
up  the  difference  when  he  says: 

Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
Or  what's  a  heaven  for? 

These  eloquent  words  contain  almost  the  whole 
philosophy  of  idealism.  A  man's  reach  should 
exceed  his  grasp  not  only  in  art,  but  in  all  that  he 
does  or  thinks. 

In  another  poem,  The  Last  Ride  Together, 
Browning  makes  a  rejected  young  lover  find  com- 
fort in  the  thought  that  if  his  suit  had  been 
successful  he  would  have  stood  upon  the  highest 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     37 

imaginable  round  of  happiness  and  achievement. 
Success  would  have  meant  failure  because  there 
would  have  been  nothing  beyond  to  spur  him 
on.  He  calls  to  mind  the  great  poets,  sculptors, 
and  musicians,  but  not  one  of  them  was  com- 
pletely satisfied  with  his  work.  Indeed  the  joy 
that  each  felt  in  his  work  was  a  joy  that  sprang 
from  the  thought  that  he  was  every  day  getting 
nearer  the  goal  though  the  goal  itself  loomed 
fairer  and  further  the  nearer  he  came  to  it.  This 
particular  lover  believed  not  only  that  a  man's 
reach  should  exceed  his  grasp,  but  that  in  every 
case  where  a  man  had  done  worthily  the  world's 
work  his  reach  had  exceeded  his  grasp.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  these  noble  lines,  in  which  he  sums 
up  his  survey,  are  treasured  in  the  memory  of 
thousands  to-day  who  do  their  work  better  be- 
cause they  remember  them: 
0 

What  hand  and  brain  went  ever  paired? 
What  heart  alike  conceived  and  dared? 
What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been  ', 
What  will  but  felt  the  fleshly  screen? 

Whatever  else  you  memorize  in  this  book,  do  not 
fail  to  memorize  these  two  quotations  from  Brown- 
ing.    They  will  stand  you  in  good  stead  in  many 


38     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

an  hour  of  temporary  despondency  and  will  help 
to  turn  many  a  stumbling-block  into  a  stepping- 
stone. 

In  Tennyson's  poem,  The  Voyage,  there  is  one 
ideal,  "one  fair  Vision,"  but  it  assumed  a  fivefold 
shape.  When  far  off  it  seemed  unreal,  merely  the 
product  of  Fancy;  but  on  a  nearer  view  it  was 
Virtue,  then  Knowledge,  then  Hope,  then  Liberty. 
Are  not  these  the  four  most  magnetic  forms  in 
which  the  ideal  appears?  Notice,  too,  the  fate 
of  the  man  who  could  not  or  would  not  see  the 
vision : 

For  one  fair  Vision  ever  fled 

Down  the  waste  waters  day  and  night, 
And  still  we  follow'd  where  she  led, 

In  hope  to  gain  upon  her  flight. 
Her  face  was  evermore  unseen, 

And  fixed  upon  the  far  sea-line; 
But  each  man  murmur'd,  "O  my  queen, 

I  follow  till  I  make  thee  mine!" 

And  now  we  lost  her,  now  she  gleam'd 

Like  Fancy  made  of  golden  air. 
Now  nearer  to  the  prow  she  seem'd 

Like  Virtue  firm,  like  Knowledge  fair, 
Now  high  on  waves  that  idly  burst 

Like  Heavenly  Hope  she  crown'd  the  sea, 
And  now,  the  bloodless  point  reversed, 

She  bore  the  blade  of  Liberty. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     39 

And  only  one  among  us  —  him 

We  pleased  not  —  he  was  seldom  pleased: 

He  saw  not  far:  his  eyes  were  dim: 
But  ours  he  swore  were  all  diseased. 
"A  ship  of  fools,"  he  shriek'd  in  spite, 

"A  ship  of  fools,"  he  sneer'd  and  wept, 

And  overboard  one  stormy  night 
He  cast  his  body,  and  on  we  swept. 


W^H 


Rudyard  Kipling,  the  greatest  living  English 
writer,  is  sometimes  thought  of  chiefly  as  a  drum 
and  trumpet  poet.  Kipling  undoubtedly  believes 
in  a  fight,  but  he  has  written  one  great  poem  in 
which  he  plainly  says  that  it  is  not  the  fight  in 
itself  that  thrills  him,  but  the  nobleness  of  the  ideal 
that  nerves  the  fighter.  It  is  enough,  says  Kip- 
ling, to  see  the  ideal  in  dreams;  it  will  never  be 
reached  till  death.  Elusive  as  it  is,  however  — 
or,  rather,  because  it  is  elusive  —  it  has  been  the 
inspiration  of  every  noble  thought  and  deed,  even 
when  these  are  seemingly  cancelled  by  death. 
Here  are  the  first  and  third  stanzas  of  his  poem, 
To  The  True  Romance: 


Thy  face  is  far  from  this  our  war, 

Our  call  and  counter-cry, 
I  shall  not  find  Thee  quick  and  kind, 

Nor  know  Thee  till  I  die. 


WHAT  C  v\  R  ^R  ME 

... 

I 

B 


CAM  Lit;.;-  41 

the  i  jpleteness. 

han  any  t;  a],  such  as  the  so' 

ideal,  or  the  educational  ideal,  or  the-  polit 

;ustrial  ideal,  o- 
I'   may,  according  to  the  theme .  of 

these,  but  its  essence  is  visit.  n  of  a 

possible  whole  suggested  by  a  part 
poet  simply  completes  the  tend 

IS   all.     When,   now,    this 
passion   for  teness  becomes  an   ingrained 

his  thinl    •  ;■   -:nd 
•his  doing,  he  fl        be  sure  that  the  ideal  in  ah 
beauty  and  power  has  come  to  dwell  with  I 

'I  -.  :  I  to  br:-  it,     j 

.'  -    js  glance  at  the  es  that  litera- 

ls  alwa  .  it.    The*    are 

rid  about  us,  and  per- 
rld   within   US,     We 
b  of  either  of  these  I 
d  us  or  the  nature  with'-  it    \ 


and  feel  far  lets  about 
o,  had  it  not  been  for  - 

In  many  ta^ 

mit  from  the  base,  and  thus  ;•'  a  whole 

'y  a  part  was  v  look  first 

at   natun  added 


/ 


42     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

anything  to  our  knowledge  of  this  great  realm,  or 
have  the  scientists  been  our  only  teachers? 

John  Tyndall,  the  great  physicist,  once  said: 
"The  greatest  discoveries  of  science  have  been 
made  when  she  has  left  the  region  of  the  seen  and 
known,  and  followed  the  imagination  by  new 
paths  to  regions  before  unseen."  "The  most 
epoch-making  discoveries,"  wrote  recently  Dr. 
Archibald  Henderson,  "find  their  origin  in  the 
fortunate  conjunction  of  intuition  and  experience. 
And  the  whole  history  of  science  is  the  history  of 
the  struggle  of  man's  intuition,  fortified  by  ex- 
perience, to  read  the  inscrutable  riddle  of  nature." 
It  is  also  true  that  science  has  often  verified  what 
had  already  been  fore-announced  by  the  idealizing 
or  completing  faculty  of  the  poet.  Seventy-five 
years  before  Newton  astonished  the  world  with 
the  law  of  gravitation,  Shakespeare  in  his  Troilus 
and  Cressida  wrote: 

But  the  strong  base  and  building  of  my  love 
Is  as  the  very  centre  of  the  earth, 
Drawing  all  things  to  it. 

]  In  1859  Darwin  published  his  epoch-making 
work,  The  Origin  of  Species.  This  was  the  first 
time  that  the  law  of  evolution  was  ever  clearly 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     43 

stated  as  a  scientific  theory,  but  the  poets  had 
long  before  been  busy  with  the  thought  of  evolu- 
tion as  an  ideal.  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam,  pub- 
lished in  1850  but  written  earlier,  contains  this 

passage: 

They  say, 
The  solid  earth  whereon  we  tread 

In  tracts  of  fluent  heat  began, 
And  grew  to  seeming-random  forms, 
The  seeming  prey  of  cyclic  storms, 
Till  at  the  last  arose  the  man. 

In  Browning's  Paracelsus,  written  in  1834,  there  is 
a  long  and  eloquent  passage  about  evolution 
which  ends  with  these  lines: 

Thus  He  dwells  in  all, 
From  life's  minute  beginnings,  up  at  last 
To  man  —  the  consummation  of  this  scheme 
Of  being,  the  completion  of  this  sphere 
Of  life:  whose  attributes  had  here  and  there 
Been  scattered  o'er  the  visible  world  before, 
Asking  to  be  combined,  dim  fragments  meant 
To  be  united  in  some  wondrous  whole, 
Imperfect  qualities  throughout  creation, 
Suggesting  some  one  creature  yet  to  make, 
Some  point  where  all  those  scattered  rays  should  meet 
Convergent  in  the  faculties  of  man. 

Navigation  of  the  air  and   the   settlement  of 
international  difficulties  by  arbitration  have  made 


44     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

more  progress  in  the  last  ten  years  than  in  all  the 
preceding  centuries.  The  vision  that  Tennyson 
saw  in  1842  and  sketched  in  Locksley  Hall  will  yet 
be  realized: 

For  I  dipped  into  the  future,  far  as  human  eye  could  see, 
Saw  the  Vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  wonder  that  would 
be; 

Saw  the  heavens  fill  with  commerce,  argosies  of  magic  sails, 
Pilots   of   the  purple  twilight,  dropping  down  with  costly- 
bales; 

Heard  the  heavens  fill  with  shouting,  and   there  rain'd  a 

ghastly  dew 
From  the  nations'  airy  navies  grappling  in  the  central  blue; 

Far  along  the  world-wide  whisper  of  the  south-wind  rushing 
warm, 

With  the  standards  of  the  peoples  plunging  thro'  the  thunder- 
storm; 

Till  the  war-drum  throbb'd  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags 

were  furl'd 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world. 

When  Jules  Verne,  a  prose  poet,  wrote  in  1872 
Around  the  World  in  Eighty  Days,  the  book  was 
not  taken  seriously.  But  with  steamers  crossing 
the  Atlantic  in  less  than  six  days,  with  Pacific 
liners  making  the  trip  from  San  Francisco  to 
Yokohama  in  three  weeks,  and  transcontinental 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     45 

railroads  spanning  the  intervening  distances,  forty 
days  are  now  enough  for  the  diligent  globe-trotter 
where  eighty  days  seemed  incredibly  short  to 
Phileas  Phogg.  When  Professor  Rontgen  was 
perfecting  his  discovery  of  the  x-rays,  but  before 
any  results  had  been  announced,  Charles  S.  Hin- 
ton  published  a  prose  romance  called  Stella,  the 
plot  of  which  is  based  on  the  possibility  of  seeing 
through  the  human  body.  Stella  appeared  in 
November,  1895,  and  a  few  months  later  the  x- 
ray  became  a  demonstrable  fact. 

The  greatest  inventor  of  delicate  and  accurate 
scientific  instruments,  especially  electrical  instru- 
ments, was  Sir  William  Thomson,  known  since 
1892  as  Lord  Kelvin.  His  inventions  were  all 
illustrations  of  the  saying  already  quoted  from 
Tyndall :  "The  greatest  discoveries  of  science  have 
been  made  when  she  has  left  the  region  of  the  seen 
and  known,  and  followed  the  imagination  by  new 
paths  to  regions  before  unseen."  Lord  Kelvin's 
genius  was  the  genius  of  vision.  He  did  not  take 
an  old  instrument  and  by  ceaseless  experimenta- 
tion try  to  make  it  better.  He  let  his  imagina- 
tion construct  a  perfect  instrument  and  then  put 
his  scientific  knowledge  to  work  to  build  it.  When 
he  died  in  1907  the  London   Times  said  of  him: 


) 


46     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

"When  he  is  done  with  a  problem,  there  is  no  more 
to  be  done.  The  problem  is  solved  once  and  for 
all.  Say  a  thing  is  not  delicate  enough;  most 
inventors  proceed  to  make  it  a  little  more  delicate, 
and  are  rather  proud  of  doing  so  much.  Lord 
Kelvin  would  ascertain  by  a  masterly  analysis  of 
the  whole  case  what  was  the  maximum  of  possible 
delicacy,  and  would  then  bring  to  bear  wide  and 
various  knowledge  and  singular  fertility  of  me- 
chanical resource  in  order  to  reach  that  maximum. 
His  siphon-recorder,  his  compass,  and  his  elec- 
trometers are  instances  of  that  thoroughness,  alike 
in  conception  and  execution,  which  marked  his 
work.  It  flowed  from  that  highest  of  intellectual 
qualities,  the  constructive  scientific  imagination, 
which  'bodies  forth  the  forms  of  things  unknown'* 
with  such  definition  and  precision  that  the  me- 
chanical faculties  work  up  to  the  conception  as 
to  a  visible  model." 


*Notice  that  these  words  describing  Lord  Kelvin's  method  are  taken 
from  Shakespeare's  famous  description  of  the  poet's  method.  See  A  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  Act  V,  Scene  i,  lines  12-17: 

The  poet's  eye,  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 

Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven; 

And  as  imagination  bodies  forth 

The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 

Turns  them  to  shapes  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 

A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

There  is  no  antagonism,  therefore,  between 
poetry  and  natural  science.  The  poets  believe 
that  nature's  reach  exceeds  her  grasp.  They  study 
her  reach,  therefore,  while  the  scientists  study  her 
grasp.  But  both  poet  and  scientist  are  dependent 
on  vision. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  second  theme  that 
literature  loves  to  treat,  personality  or  human 
nature.  The  quotations  already  made  from  the 
English  poets,  Browning,  Tennyson,  and  Kipling, 
might  lead  the  reader  to  infer  that  American 
literature  is  deficient  in  poems  of  high  human 
idealism.  On  the  contrary  there  is  no  modern 
literature  that  is  more  nobly  idealistic  than  our 
own.  A  German  scholar,  Eduard  Engel,  who  has 
written  an  excellent  little  history  of  American 
literature,  has  this  to  say  about  our  idealism: 
"The  fundamental  characteristic  of  American 
literature  is  its  idealism.  All  really  great  Ameri- 
can writers,  all  whom  the  Americans  themselves 
consider  great,  have  without  exception  been  ideal- 
ists, almost  extreme  idealists.  American  poets 
have  been  the  real  preachers  of  the  nation.  Poetry 
is  to  the  Americans  a  sacred  thing,  and  it  is 
no  accident  that  from  an  American  poet,  from 
Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  the  world  received 


4S     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

that  beautiful  poem,  whose  refrain,  'Excelsior!' 
has  become  the  watchword  of  idealists  in  all 
lands." 

This  is  high  praise,  but  it  is  abundantly  justified 
by  the  facts.  Ex-President  Eliot  of  Harvard  goes 
still  farther.  "We  are,"  he  says,  "the  most 
idealistic  people  who  have  thus  far  inherited  the 
planet.  We  are  more  idealistic  in  our  conception 
of  man,  of  God,  and  of  the  universe  than  any 
other  people."  It  is  at  least  a  striking  fact  that 
the  poets  who  best  represent  American  life,  Long- 
fellow, Emerson,  Poe,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Whittier, 
and  Lanier,  have  each  written  a  poem  which 
might  justly  be  called  "My  Creed  of  Idealism." 
And  Hawthorne's  greatest  story,  The  Great  Stone 
Face,  may  well  bear  the  same  title.  The  poems 
are  Longfellow's  Excelsior,  Emerson's  The  Fore- 
runners, Poe's  Eldorado,  Lowell's  V Envoi  to  the 
Muse,  Holmes's  Chambered  Nautilus,  Whittier's 
The  Vanishers,  and  Lanier's  Song  of  the  Chatta- 
hoochee. Each  of  these  treatments  of  the  ideal 
has  won  its  deserved  popularity  because  it  gives 
outlet  to  a  feeling  common  to  us  all.  "Where 
there  is  no  vision,"  said  a  philosopher  three  thou- 
sand years  ago,  "the  people  perish,"  and  the  proof 
of  his  saying  is  that,  while  all  nations  without  a 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     49 

literature  have  perished,  the  nations  with  a  litera- 
ture still  live  in  their  ideals.  It  is  not  ideas  that 
make  a  people's  civilization,  it  is  ideals..  Ideas 
are  what  people  think,  ideals  are  what  they  strive 
for.  An  idea  is  a  ladder  on  the  ground;  an  ideal 
is  a  ladder  set  up.  If  America  should  be  suddenly 
blotted  from  the  map  the  masterpieces  that  follow 
would  still  live  to  testify  to  future  ages  that  the 
vanished  Americans  kept  before  them  the  vision 
of  the  ideal. 

Excelsior  is  almost  too  well  known  to  be  repro- 
duced in  full.  But  Engel's  remark  about  the 
international  service  that  it  has  performed  and 
Longfellow's  own  explanation  of  its  meaning 
make  it  worth  reading  and  re-reading  till  we  know 
every  stanza  of  it  by  heart. 

The  shades  of  night  were  falling  fast, 
As  through  an  Alpine  village  passed 
A  youth,  who  bore,  'mid  snow  and  ice, 
A  banner  with  the  strange  device, 
Excelsior! 

His  brow  was  sad;  his  eye  beneath, 
Flashed  like  a  falchion  from  its  sheath, 
And  like  a  silver  clarion  rung 
The  accents  of  that  unknown  tongue, 
Excelsior! 


50     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

In  happy  homes  he  saw  the  light 
Of  household  fires  gleam  warm  and  bright; 
Above,  the  spectral  glaciers  shone, 
And  from  his  lips  escaped  a  groan, 
Excelsior! 

"Try  not  the  Pass!"  the  old  man  said; 

"Dark  lowers  the  tempest  overhead, 
The  roaring  torrent  is  deep  and  wide!" 
And  loud  that  clarion  voice  replied, 
Excelsior! 

"Oh  stay,"  the  maiden  said,  "and  rest 
Thy  weary  head  upon  this  breast!" 
A  tear  stood  in  his  bright  blue  eye, 
But  still  he  answered,  with  a  sigh, 
Excelsior! 

"Beware  the  pine-tree's  withered  branch! 
Beware  the  awful  avalanche!" 
This  was  the  peasant's  last  Good-night, 
A  voice  replied,  far  up  the  height, 
Excelsior! 

At  break  of  day,  as  heavenward 
The  pious  monks  of  Saint  Bernard 
Uttered  the  oft-repeated  prayer, 
A  voice  cried  through  the  startled  air, 
Excelsior! 

A  traveller,  by  the  faithful  hound, 
Half-buried  in  the  snow  was  found, 
Still  grasping  in  his  hand  of  ice 
That  banner  with  the  strange  device, 
Excelsior! 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      51 

There  in  the  twilight  cold  and  gray, 
Lifeless,  but  beautiful,  he  lay, 
And  from  the  sky,  serene  and  far, 
A  voice  fell,  like  a  falling  star, 
Excelsior! 


Poe  said  that  Excelsior  depicted  "the  earnest 
upward  striving  of  the  soul  —  an  impulse  not  to  be 
subdued  even  in  death."  Longfellow  himself,  in 
a  letter  to  C.  K.  Tuckerman,  explained  the  mean- 
ing of  his  poem  as  follows:  "I  have  had  the 
pleasure  of  receiving  your  note  in  regard  to  the 
poem  Excelsior,  and  very  willingly  give  you  my 
intention  in  writing  it.  This  was  no  more  than  to 
display,  in  a  series  of  pictures,  the  life  of  a  man  of 
genius,  resisting  all  temptations,  laying  aside  all 
fears,  heedless  of  all  warnings,  and  pressing  right 
on  to  accomplish  his  purpose.  His  motto  is 
Excelsior,  'higher.'  He  passes  through  the  Al- 
pine village  —  through  the  rough,  cold  paths  of 
the  world  —  where  the  peasants  cannot  under- 
stand him,  and  where  the  watchword  is  an  'un- 
known tongue.'  He  disregards  the  happiness  of 
domestic  peace  and  sees  the  glaciers  —  his  fate  — 
before  him.  He  disregards  the  warning  of  the 
old  man's  wisdom  and  the  fascinations  of  woman's 
love.     He    answers    to    all,    'Higher    yet.'     The 


52     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

monks  of  Saint  Bernard  are  the  representatives  of 
religious  forms  and  ceremonies,  and  with  their 
oft-repeated  prayer  mingles  the  sound  of  his  voice, 
telling  them  there  is  something  higher  than  forms 
and  ceremonies.  Filled  with  these  aspirations,  he 
perishes,  without  having  reached  the  perfection 
he  longed  for;  and  the  voice  heard  in  the  air  is  the 
promise  of  immortality  and  progress  ever  upward." 
The  name  of  Emerson's  poem,  The  Forerunners, 
is  self-explanatory.  The  forerunners  are  those 
eternal  mysteries  that  forever  beckon  but  forever 
elude.  Emerson,  like  Browning,  emphasizes  the 
unseizableness  of  the  ideal.  An  ideal  overtaken, 
an  ideal  realized,  ceases  to  be  an  ideal,  though  it 
may  become  the  stepping-stone  to  another  and 
still  higher  ideal.  Emerson's  poetry  is  not  usually 
as  easy  reading  as  Longfellow's,  but  no  one  can 
miss  the  meaning  and  message  of  The  Forerunners: 

Long  I  followed  happy  guides, 
I  could  never  reach  their  sides; 
Their  step  is  forth,  and,  ere  the  day, 
Breaks  up  their  leaguer,  and  away. 
Keen  my  sense,  my  heart  was  young, 
Right  good-will  my  sinews  strung, 
But  no  speed  of  mine  avails 
To  hunt  upon  their  shining  trails. 
On  and  away,  their  hasting  feet 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME      53 

Make  the  morning  proud  and  sweet; 

Flowers  they  strew  —  I  catch  the  scent; 

Or  tone  of  silver  instrument 

Leaves  on  the  wind  melodious  trace; 

Yet  I  could  never  see  their  face. 

On  eastern  hills  I  see  their  smokes, 

Mixed  with  mist  by  distant  lochs. 

I  met  many  travellers 

Who  the  road  had  surely  kept; 

They  saw  not  my  fine  revellers  — 

These  had  crossed  them  while  they  slept. 

Some  had  heard  their  fair  report, 

In  the  country  or  the  court. 

Fleetest  couriers  alive 

Never  yet  could  once  arrive, 

As  they  went  or  they  returned, 

At  the  house  where  these  sojourned. 

Sometimes  their  strong  speed  they  slacken, 

Though  they  are  not  overtaken; 

In  sleep  their  jubilant  troop  is- near  — 

I  tuneful  voices  overhear; 

It  may  be  in  wood  or  waste  — 

At  unawares  'tis  come  and  past. 

Their  near  camp  my  spirit  knows 

By  signs  gracious  as  rainbows. 

I  thenceforward  and  long  after 

Listen  for  their  harp-like  laughter, 

And  carry  in  my  heart,  for  days, 

Peace  that  hallows  rudest  ways. 

Poe's  little  poem,  Eldorado,  appeared  only  a  few 
months  before    his    death.     In  it  he  tells  of  his 


54     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

ceaseless  search  for  the  beautiful.  No  man 
ever  lived  in  whom  the  passion  for  pure  beauty 
burned  more  consumingly  than  in  Edgar  Allan 
Poe.  Whatever  his  other  failings  he  never  com- 
promised his  ideals  of  poetic  beauty.  The  ad- 
vice that  he  gives  in  the  last  stanza — "Ride, 
boldly  ride"  even  to  death  —  is  advice  that  he 
himself  followed  unfalteringly.  "With  me,"  he 
says,  "poetry  has  been  not  a  purpose,  but  a 
passion;  and  the  passions  should  be  held  in 
reverence."  To  his  friend,  F.  W.  Thomas,  he 
writes  at  the  very  time  when  Eldorado  was  stir- 
ring in  his  brain:  "Depend  upon  it  after  all, 
Thomas,  literature  is  the  most  noble  of  profes- 
sions. In  fact,  it  is  about  the  only  one  for  a 
man.  For  my  own  part  there  is  no  seducing 
me  from  the  path.  I  shall  be  a  litterateur  at  least, 
all  my  life;  nor  would  I  abandon  the  hopes  which 
still  lead  me  on  for  all  the  gold  in  California." 
In  this  farewell  poem  Poe  bequeaths  his  ideal  to 
posterity : 

Gaily  bedight, 

A  gallant  knight, 
In  sunshine  and  in  shadow, 

Had  journeyed  long, 
*  Singing  a  song, 

In  search  of  Eldorado. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     55 

But  he  grew  old  — 

This  knight  so  bold  — 
And  o'er  his  heart  a  shadow 

Fell  as  he  found 

No  spot  of  ground 
That  looked  like  Eldorado. 

And,  as  his  strength 
Failed  him  at  length, 
He  met  a  pilgrim  shadow  — 
"Shadow,"  said  he, 
"Where  can  it  be  — 
This  land  of  Eldorado?" 

"Over  the  Mountains 
Of  the  Moon, 
Down  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow, 
Ride,  boldly  ride," 
The  shade  replied, 
"If  you  seek  for  Eldorado." 

In  Longfellow's  Journal,  May  3,  1855,  occurs 
the  following  entry:  "Passed  an  hour  with  Lowell 
this  morning.  He  read  me  a  poem,  The  Muse  — 
very  beautiful.  It  reminded  me  of  Emerson's 
Forerunners."  The  exact  name  of  the  poem  is 
U Envoi  to  the  Muse.  It  treats,  as  Longfellow  im- 
plies, the  same  great  theme  that  Emerson  had 
treated  in  The  Forerunners.  Longfellow  might 
have  added,  if  modesty  had  not  forbidden,  that  it 
treated  also  the  same  great  theme  that  he  himself 


56     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

had  made  popular  in  Excelsior.  The  first  twenty- 
four  lines  of  Lowell's  poem  will  give  an  idea  of  the 
whole: 

Whither?  Albeit  I  follow  fast, 

In  all  life's  circuit  I  but  find, 
Not  where  thou  art,  but  where  thou  wast, 

Sweet  beckoner,  more  fleet  than  wind! 
I  haunt  the  pine-dark  solitudes, 

With  soft  brown  silence  carpeted, 
And  plot  to  snare  thee  in  the  woods; 

Peace  I  o'ertake,  but  thou  art  fled! 
I  find  the  rock  where  thou  didst  rest, 
The  moss  thy  skimming  foot  hath  prest; 

All  Nature  with  thy  parting  thrills, 
Like  branches  after  birds  new-flown; 

Thy  passage  hill  and  hollow  fills 
With  hints  of  virtue  not  their  own; 
In  dimples  still  the  water  slips 
Where  thou  has  dipt  thy  finger-tips; 

Just,  just  beyond,  forever  burn 

Gleams  of  a  grace  without  return; 

Upon  thy  shade  I  plant  my  foot, 
And  through  my  frame  strange  raptures  shoot; 
All  of  thee  but  thyself  I  grasp; 

I  seem  to  fold  thy  luring  shape, 
And  vague  air  to  my  bosom  clasp, 

Thou  lithe,  perpetual  Escape! 

The  last  line,  "Thou  lithe,  perpetual  Escape," 
is  an  admirable  definition  of  a  lofty  ideal,  worthy 
to  be  put  with  anything  that  Browning  has  said 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     57 

on  the  subject.  Lowell,  too,  you  observe,  puts  the 
emphasis  on  the  unattainableness  of  the  ideal.  He 
finds  the  footprints  of  the  ideal  everywhere,  "In 
all  life's  circuit,"but  the  ideal  itself  he  cannot  clasp. 
"  The  Chambered  Nautilus"  says  Holmes,  "was 
suggested  by  looking  at  a  section  of  one  of  those 
chambered  cells  to  which  is  given  the  name  of 
Pearly  Nautilus."  A  recent  biographer  of  Holmes 
says :  "  The  Chambered  Nautilus  is  perhaps  the 
only  bit  of  his  verse  which  has  the  artistic  com- 
pleteness which  enables  it  to  stand  alone."  In 
what  does  its  artistic  completeness  consist?  It 
consists  in  the  skilful  way  in  which  Holmes  has 
taken  a  bit  of  scientific  knowledge  and  humanized 
it  for  daily  need.  The  splendid  idealism  of  the 
last  stanza  has  made  it  the  most  enduring  shrine 
of  its  author's  name  and  fame.  There  is  perhaps 
no  other  single  stanza  in  our  literature  that  is 
known  by  heart  by  more  Americans  than  the  last 
stanza  of  The  Chambered  Nautilus: 

This  is  the  ship  of  pearl,  which,  poets  feign, 

Sails  the  unshadowed  main  — 

The  venturous  bark  that  flings 
On  the  sweet  summer  wind  its  purpled  wings 
In  gulfs  enchanted,  where  the  Siren  sings, 

And  coral  reefs  lie  bare, 
Where  the  cold  sea-maids  rise  to  sun  their  streaming  hair. 


58     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Its  webs  of  living  gauze  no  more  unfurl; 

Wrecked  is  the  ship  of  pearl! 

And  every  chambered  cell, 
Where  its  dim  dreaming  life  was  wont  to  dwell, 
As  the  frail  tenant  shaped  his  growing  shell, 

Before  thee  lies  revealed  — 
Its  irised  ceiling  rent,  its  sunless  crypt  unsealed! 

Year  after  year  beheld  the  silent  toil 

That  spread  his  lustrous  coil; 

Still,  as  the  spiral  grew, 
He  left  the  past  year's  dwelling  for  the  new, 
Stole  with  soft  step  its  shining  archway  through, 

Built  up  its  idle  door, 
Stretched  in  his  last-found  home,  and  knew  the  old  no  more. 

Thanks  for  the  heavenly  message  brought  by  thee, 

Child  of  the  wandering  sea, 

Cast  from  her  lap,  forlorn! 
From  thy  dead  lips  a  clearer  note  is  born 
Than  ever  Triton  blew  from  wreathed  horn! 

While  on  mine  ear  it  rings, 
Through  the  deep  caves  of  thought  I  hear  a  voice  that  sings: 

Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll! 

Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea! 

There  are  those  who  say  that  Holmes  borrowed 
some  of  his  thoughts  from  a  poem  called  An  Elegy 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     59 

on  a  shell:  The  Nautilus,  by  Dr.  Samuel  L.  Mitchill. 
Here  are  the  three  best  stanzas  of  Doctor  Mit- 
chill's  poem.     Judge  for  yourself* 

Thou  wast  a  house  with  many  chambers  fraught, 

Built  by  a  Nautilus  or  Argonaut, 

With  fitness,  symmetry,  and  skill, 

To  suit  the  owner's  taste  and  sovereign  will. 

In  curves  of  elegance  thy  shape  appears, 
Surpassing  art  through  centuries  of  years, 
By  tints  and  colours  brilliant  made, 
And  all,  —  the  finished  workman  has  displayed. 

So  man  erects  in  sumptuous  mode 
A  structure  proud  for  his  abode, 
But  knows  not,  when  of  life  bereft, 
Who'll  creep  within  the  shell  he  left. 

Is  it  not  evident  that  Mitchill's  poem  has  not  a 
ray  of  idealism?  Compare  his  last  stanza  with 
Holmes's.  To  Mitchill  the  nautilus  suggests  not 
human  life  but  a  house,  and  he  concludes  by  re- 
minding us  that  men  do  not  know  who  will  move 
into  their  houses  when  they  are  dead.  There's 
truth  of  a  sort  but  no  poetry,  no  uplift,  no  chal- 
lenge in  that  thought.  Indeed  Mitchill's  whole 
poem  lives  to-day  only  in  the  reflected  fame  of 
Holmes's  lines. 

The  name  of  Whittier's  poem,  The  Fanishers, 


60     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

also  suggests  Emerson's  Forerunners.  Whittier, 
however,  took  the  suggestion  of  his  lines  not  from 
Emerson  but  from  an  Indian  legend.  "I  take  the 
liberty,"  he  writes  to  a  friend,  "of  enclosing  a  little 
poem  of  mine  which  has  beguiled  some  weary 
hours.  1  hope  thee  will  like  it.  How  strange  it 
seems  not  to  read  it  to  my  sister!  If  thee  have 
read  Schoolcraft*  thee  will  remember  what  he  says 
of  the  Puck-wud-jinnies  or  'little  vanishers.'  The 
legend  is  very  beautiful  and  I  hope  I  have  done  it 
justice  in  some  sort."  The  first  two  and  last  two 
stanzas  will  give  an  idea  of  the  whole: 

Sweetest  of  all  childlike'dreams 

In  the  simple  Indian  lore 
Still  to  me  the  legend  seems 

Of  the  shapes  who  flit  before. 

Flitting,  passing,  seen  and  gone, 
Never  reached  nor  found  at  rest, 

Baffling  search,  but  beckoning  on 
To  the  Sunset  of  the  Blest. 


*  The  reference  is  to  Henry  Rowe  Schoolcraft  (1703-1S64)  who  at  the  re- 
quest of  Congress  edited  his  Historical  and  Statistical  Information  Respecting 
the  History,  Condition,  and  Prospects  of  the  Indian  Tribes  of  the  United  States 
(5  volumes,  1851-1855).  There  are  more  than  300  illustrations  in  these 
volumes  and  the  cost  to  Congress  was  about  $30,000  a  volume.  Schoolcraft 
added  a  sixth  volume  in  1857.  Longfellow  also  drew  from  Schoolcraft  for 
his  Hiawatha.  Congress  never  made  an  appropriation  that  yielded  better 
returns. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     61 

Guided  thus,  0  friend  of  mine! 

Let  us  walk  our  little  way, 
Knowing  by  each  beckoning  sign 

That  we  are  not  quite  astray 

Chase  we  still,  with  baffled  feet, 
Smiling  eye  and  waving  hand, 

Sought  and  seeker  soon  shall  meet, 
Lost  and  found,  in  Sunset  Land! 

In  spite  of  the  general  resemblance  between  this 
poem  and  Emerson's  Forerunners,  The  Vanishers 
could  hardly  have  been  written  by  Emerson.  The 
religious  faith  and  hope  of  the  Quaker  poet  have 
made  his  name  a  household  word  among  thousands 
of  readers  to  whom  Emerson  is  still  a  sealed  book. 
With  Whittier  all  high  ideals  will  find  their  full 
realization  in  Heaven,  "the  Sunset  Land  of  Souls." 
His  idealism  drew  its  chief  inspiration  and  support 
from  that  world-fountain  of  idealism,  the  Bible. 
It  is  an  idealism  not  essentially  different  from 
Emerson's,  but  it  is  differently  expressed. 

The  last  poem  that  I  shall  mention,  The  Song  of 
the  Chattahoochee  by  Sidney  Lanier,  sprang  into 
immediate  popularity  and  remains  the  best  known 
short  poem  that  its  author  wrote.  The  Chatta- 
hoochee River,  it  should  be  said,  rises  in  Haber- 
sham County,  in  northeastern  Georgia,  and  in  its 


62     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

southwesterly  course  flows  through  the  adjoining 
Hall  County.  Its  length  is  about  five  hundred 
miles.  In  melody  and  meaning  this  poem  is 
characteristic  of  Lanier  at  his  best: 

Out  of  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Down  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
I  hurry  amain  to  reach  the  plain, 
Run  the  rapid  and  leap  the  fall, 
Split  at  the  rock  and  together  again, 
Accept  my  bed,  or  narrow  or  wide, 
And  flee  from  folly  on  every  side 
With  a  lover's  pain  to  attain  the  plain 

Far  from  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Far  from  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

All  down  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

All  through  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
The  rushes  cried  Abide,  abide, 
The  wilful  waterweeds  held  me  thrall, 
The  laving  laurel  turned  my  tide, 
The  ferns  and  the  fondling  grass  said  Stay, 
The  dewberry  dipped  for  to  work  delay, 
And  the  little  reeds  sighed  Abide,  abide, 

Here  in  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Here  in  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

High  o'er  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Veiling  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
The  hickory  told  me  manifold 
Fair  tales  of  shade,  the  poplar  tall 
Wrought  me  her  shadowy  self  to  hold, 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     63 

The  chestnut,  the  oak,  the  walnut,  the  pine, 
Overleaning,  with  nickering  meaning  and  sign, 
Said,  Pass  not,  sg  cold,  these  manifold 

Deep  shades  of  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

These  glades  in  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

And  oft  in  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

And  oft  in  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
The  white  quartz  shone,  and  the  smooth  brook-stone 
Did  bar  me  of  passage  with  friendly  brawl, 
And  many  a  luminous  jewel  lone  — 
Crystals  clear  or  a-cloud  with  mist, 
Ruby,  garnet,  and  amethyst  — 
Made  lures  with  the  lights  of  streaming  stone 

In  the  clefts  of  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

In  the  beds  of  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

But,  oh,  not  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

And,  oh,  not  the  valleys  of  Hall 
Avail:  I  am  fain  for  to  water  the  plain. 
Downward  the  voices  of  Duty  call  — 
Downward,  to  toil  and  be  mixed  with  the  main, 
The  dry  fields  burn,  and  the  mills  are  to  turn, 
And  a  myriad  flowers  mortally  yearn, 
And  the  lordly  main  from  beyond  the  plain 

Calls  o'er  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Calls  through  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

The  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee  has  often  been 
compared  with  Tennyson's  Brook,  but  there  is  no 
resemblance  between  them  except  that  water 
flows  through  both.  The  best  poem  with  which 
to  compare  it  is  Longfellow's  Excelsior.     Both  are 


64     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

treatments  of  idealism  in  action,  but  it  is  a  differ- 
ent kind  of  action.  Longfellow  pictures  the  search 
for  the  ideal  under  the  form  of  a  young  mountain 
climber  who  moves  upward  but  away  from  men, 
while  Lanier  sees  in  the  course  of  the  Chattahoochee 
the  type  of  the  idealist  who  hurries  down  from  the 
hills  to  serve  in  the  plain.  Personal  perfection  is 
the  goal  of  the  one,  social  service  of  the  other. 
Thirty-six  years  (1841  to  1877)  intervene  between 
the  two  poems,  and  these  years  mark  a  steady 
national  progress  from  the  individual  ideal  of  the 
first  poem  to  the  communal  ideal  of  the  second. 

But  the  best  philosophy  of  idealism  was  given 
by  St.  Paul  when  he  said:  "But  we  all,  with  open 
face  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the 
Lord,  are  changed  into  the  same  image  from  glory 
to  glory,"  and  the  best  commentary  on  these 
words  is  Hawthorne's  Great  Stone  Face.  This 
wonderful  story  can  only  be  summarized  here: 
There  is  in  the  White  Mountains  of  New  Hamp- 
shire a  freak  of  nature  known  as  the  Great  Stone 
Face.  The  expression  of  the  Face  is  kind  and 
noble,  and  there  was  a  tradition  in  the  valley  that 
there  would  some  day  appear  a  great  man  with 
the  very  countenance  of  the  Great  Stone  Face. 
This  man  was  to  be  a  sort  of  saviour  of  the  people. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     65 

Ernest,  a  little  boy  living  in  the  valley,  heard  from 
his  mother's  lips  the  tradition  of  the  Great  Stone 
Face  and  lived  in  eager  expectation  of  the  coming 
of  the  great  man  thus  foretold.  The  changing 
but  always  noble  look  of  the  Great  Stone  Face  had 
an  increasing  influence  upon  the  development  of 
Ernest's  character.  By  looking  and  longing  he 
was  being  slowly  "changed  into  the  same  image." 

Three  times,  as  the  years  went  by,  it  was  con- 
fidently proclaimed  in  the  valley  that  the  great 
man  so  long  foretold  was  about  to  come.  Ernest 
goes  out  each  time  to  welcome  him  but  returns 
disappointed.  The  people  believed  the  resem- 
blance complete  but  Ernest  did  not.  "Old  Mr. 
Gathergold,"  a  type  of  the  merely  rich  man, 
"Old  Blood-and-Thunder,"  a  type  of  the  military 
hero,  and  "Old  Stony  Phiz,"  a  popular  type  of  the 
statesman,  though  they  possessed  some  admirable 
qualities  and  had  done  some  service  for  their 
country,  did  not  have,  as  Ernest  thought,  "the 
gentle  wisdom,  the  deep,  broad,  tender  sym- 
pathies" of  the  Great  Stone  Face. 

At  length,  after  Ernest  had  become  an  old  man, 
a  poet  visited  the  valley.  He  too  had  been  born 
in  the  valley  and  had  felt  the  influence  of  the  Great 
Stone  Face.     He  was  a  poet  (1)  of  nature  and  (2) 


66     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

of  personality:  (i)  "If  he  sang  of  a  mountain,  the 
eyes  of  all  mankind  beheld  a  mightier  grandeur 
reposing  on  its  breast,  or  soaring  to  its  summit, 
than  had  before  been  seen  there.  If  his  theme 
were  a  lovely  lake,  a  celestial  smile  had  now  been 
thrown  over  it,  to  gleam  forever  on  its  surface. 
If  it  were  the  vast  old  sea,  even  the  deep  im- 
mensity of  its  dread  bosom  seemed  to  swell  the 
higher,  as  if  moved  by  the  emotions  of  the  song. 
Thus  the  world  assumed  another  and  a  better 
aspect  from  the  hour  that  the  poet  blessed  it  with 
his  happy  eyes.  The  Creato;-  had  bestowed  him, 
as  the  last  best  touch  to  his  own  handiwork. 
Creation  was  not  finished  till  the  poet  came  to 
interpret,  and  so  complete  it.  (2)  The  effect  was 
no  less  high  and  beautiful,  when  his  human  breth- 
ren were  the  subject  of  his  verse.  The  man  or 
woman,  sordid  with  the  common  dust  of  life,  who 
crossed  his  daily  path,  and  the  little  child  who 
played  in  it,  were  glorified,  if  he  beheld  them  in  his 
mood  of  poetic  faith.  He  showed  the  golden 
links  of  the  great  chain  that  intertwined  them 
with  an  angelic  kindred;  he  brought  out  the  hid- 
den traits  of  a  celestial  birth  that  made  them 
worthy  of  such  kin." 

He  and  Ernest  talked  long  together  and  Ernest 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     67 

hoped  that  the  great  man  had  at  last  come.  The 
poet,  however,  confessed  to  Ernest  that  his  deeds 
were  not  in  harmony  with  his  words.  "Suddenly 
the  poet,  by  an  irresistible  impulse,  threw  his  arms 
aloft,  and  shouted,  'Behold!  Behold!  Ernest  is 
himself  the  likeness  of  the  Great  Stone  Face!' 
Then  all  the  people  looked  and  saw  that^what  the 
deep-sighted  poet  said  was  true.  The  prophecy 
was  fulfilled.  But  Ernest,  having  finished  what 
he  had  to  say,  took  the  poet's  arm  and  walked 
slowly  homeward,  still  hoping  that  some  wiser  and 
better  man  than  himself  would  by  and  by  appear, 
bearing  a  resemblance  to  the  Great  Stone  Face." 
Hawthorne's  story  sets  forth  all  that  this  chap- 
ter has  tried  to  suggest.  Ernest  had  set  his  ideal 
high  and  was  thus  saved  from  being  the  victim 
of  the  popular  and  passing  ideals  of  money,  war, 
and  politics.  Though  he  still  looked  for  a  better 
man,  his  own  recognition  and  reward  had  come.  It 
was  a  poet,  however,  who  founcf  him  and  crowned 
him,  and  thus  made  him  one  of  the  world's 
torch-bearers  of  idealism.  Painting,  sculpture, 
and  music  are  also  outlets  of  the  ideal  within  us. 
But  not  one  of  them  equals  literature  in  the 
clearness  with  which  it  speaks  or  in  the  numbers 
whom  it  has  helped  to  the  higher  life. 


CHAPTER  III 

It  Can  Give  You  a  Better  Knowledge  of  Human 
Nature 

HUMAN  nature  can  be  learned  from  every, 
kind  of  literature.  Even  lyric  poetry, 
which  does  not  attempt  to  create  charac- 
ter, reflects  at  least  the  chaiacter  of  the  writer. 
Take,  for  example,  William  Cullen  Bryant's  great 
lyric  poem,  Thanatopsis.  Suppose,  now,  that  you 
knew  absolutely  nothing  about  Bryant  except  that 
he  was  the  author  of  this  poem.  How  much  of  his 
human  nature  could  you  infer  from  this  poem 
alone?  Read  it  very  carefully  with  this  end  in 
view  and  see  if  you  agree  with  these  findings: 
First,  he  was  not  only  an  observer  but  a  lover  of 
nature,  at  least  of  nature's  "visible  forms,"  the 
sun,  the  sky,  the  ocean,  woods,  meadows,  and 
mountains.  His  descriptions,  in  other  words,  are 
not  only  accurate  but  affectionate.  Second,  he 
seems  to  have  been  either  a  very  young  man  or  a 
very  old  man  when  he  wrote  Thanatopsis  because 

68 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     69 

the  poem  is  chiefly  about  the  fear  of  death,  or 
rather  about  nature  as  an  antidote  to  the  fear  of 
death.  Is  it  not  chiefly  to  the  young  or  to  the  old 
that  "thoughts  of  the  last  bitter  hour  come  like 
a  blight"?  I  should  incline  to  the  guess  that  the 
author  was  a  very  young  man  because  his  philoso- 
phy is  immature  and  thin.  As  we  grow  older, 
nature  means  a  great  deal  more  to  us  than  that  at 
death  we  shall  lie  down  in  good  company  and  have 
a  glorious  sepulchre.  Third,  there  is  a  dignity 
and  simplicity  and  sincerity  in  the  words  and 
thoughts  that  seem  to  be  the  reflection  of  the 
author's  character.  If  he  was  not  himself  noble 
and  genuine  he  was  a  master  in  the  art  of  making 
the  style  conceal  the  writer.  Fourth,  whether 
young  or  old  his  use  of  beautiful  vowel-combina- 
tions and  sonorous  words  and  phrases  marks  him 
out  as  peculiarly  gifted  in  his  feeling  for  the 
musical  qualities  of  language.  Read  almost  any 
of  the  lines  of  Thanatopsis  aloud  and  you  cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  author's  ear  for  word  music 
was  almost  perfect.  As  this  quality  is  well  sus- 
tained from  the  beginning  of  the  poem  to  the  end 
I  should  expect  to  find  it  reappear  in  every  poem 
that  the  author  wrote.  Fifth,  the  close  of  the 
poem  shows  that  the  author  was  not  unwilling  to 


7o     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

have  his  poems  end  with  a  formal  moral,  a  sort  of 
"This-fable-tcaches-us."  As  the  moral,  though 
beautiful  in  itself,  is  not  closely  connected  with 
what  precedes,  I  should  say  that  the  author  had 
the  habit  of  moralizing. 

Try  the  same  method  with  other  poems  by 
other  authors.  There  is  always  the  autobio- 
graphical element  and  the  attempt  to  find  it  will 
show  you  that  style,  as  Carlyle  puts  it,  is  not  the 
coat  of  a  writer  but  his  skin.  Then  take  poems 
that  are  national  favourites  —  The  Star-Spangled 
Banner  by  Francis  Scott  Key,  Home,  Sweet  Home 
by  John  Howard  Payne,  America  by  Samuel 
Francis  Smith,  The  Bivouac  of  the  Dead  by  Theo- 
dore O'Hara,  The  Blue  and  the  Gray  by  Francis 
Miles  Finch,  Little  Boy  Blue  by  Eugene  Field  — 
and  study  in  them  the  character  of  the  nation 
that  has  taken  them  to  heart.  There  is  danger 
here  that  you  may  overrate  the  nation's  real 
approval  of  the  poems  selected.  But  you  will 
learn  at  any  rate  that  just  as  a  man  expresses 
himself  in  what  he  writes,  so  a  whole  people 
expresses  itself  in  what  it  likes.  It  is  to  be  hoped, 
too,  that  the  historians  of  literature  will  take  more 
pains  to  find  out  how  popular  or  unpopular  a  poem 
really  is  before  they  hold  it  up  to  us  as  a  mirror  of 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     71 

national  taste.  Popularity  is  not  a  high  test  of 
literary  excellence  but  it  is  a  sure  test  of  a  people's 
taste. 

/"All  literature,  then,  reveals  unconsciously  some- 
thing of  the  men  who  made  it  and  something  also 
of  the  people  who  like  or  dislike  it.  But  w^wish 
now  to  study  human  nature  not  as  it  is  uncon- 
sciously revealed  in  literature,  but  as  it  is  con- 
sciously created  in  literature^  We  have  in  mind 
not  lyric  poetry  but  great  epics,  dramas,  novels, 
and  short  stories.  We  are  thinking  not  of  the 
men  who  wrote  these  but  of  the  men  and  women 
who  move  through  their  pages,  who  give  them 
interest  and  immortality,  and  who  are  themselves 
more  alive  than  their  creators.  JA  study  of  these 
men  and  women,  we  hold,  will  greatly  widen  and 
deepen  your  knowledge  of  human  natureT^  There 
is  no  chair  of  human  nature  in  any  of  o~ur  schools 
or  colleges,  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  a 
knowledge  of  human  riPt11rp  w'^  yield  better 
returns__than  a  knowIHgf  nf  anythiag  p1gp  In 
most  professions  .success  is  not  only  conditioned 
on,  but  is  in  almost  exact  proportion  to,  a  wide 
and  sympathetic  knowledge  of  our  fellow-men. 
No  one  can  expect  to  be  a  useful  teacher,  preacher, 
doctor,  editor,  lawyer,   business-man,   employer, 


72     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

or  employee  who  is  ignorant  of  the  motives  that 
govern  men  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  Knowl- 
edge here  is  power  and  opportunity,  ignorance  is 
weakness  and  inefficiency. J  The  knowledge  that 
we  get  from  everyday  experience  may  be  good 
as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  does  not  go  far  enough. 
It  is  neither  broad  enough  nor  deep  enough.'  To 
make  it  broader  and  deeper  we  must  go  to  the 
great  laboratory  of  character  creation  that  the 
masters  have  fitted  up  and  made  accessible  to  us 
in  literature. 

What  a  strange  company  it  is  —  these  men  and 
women  who  were  not  born  but  made!  They  are 
not  ghosts,  for  they  never  wore  flesh.  They  are 
alive,  actively  and  increasingly  alive.  Try  them 
by  the  tests  of  real  life:  Do  they  not  influence 
others?  Are  they  not  talked  about  and  written 
about  and  thought  about?  Do  they  show  signs 
of  weakness  hr  old  age?  Have  they  not  become 
a  part  of  the  very  consciousness  of  men?  Do  not 
some  of  them  keep  alive  the  memory  of  nations 
otherwise  forgotten?  Are  not  many  of  them  found 
in  that  "choir  invisible  whose  music  is  the  gladness 
of  the  world  "  ?  Have  they  not  linked  man  to  man, 
and  nation  to  nation,  and  century  to  century  by 
furnishing  a  common  theme  of  thought  and  a  com- 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     73 

mon  centre  of  association?  Of  one  of  these  made 
characters  Dr.  Horace  Howard  Furness  says:  "No 
one  of  mortal  mould  (save  Him  'whose  blessed  feet 
were  nailed  for  our  advantage  on  the  bitter  cross') 
ever  trod  this  earth,  commanding  such  absorbing 
interest  as  thisHamlet,  this  mere  creation  of  a 
poet's  brain." 

To  create  character,  to  give  immortality  to  a 
name,  to  send  a  human  being  down  the  ages  as  a 
comrade  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  re- 
quires genius  of  the  highest  order.  It  demands  a 
blend  of  heart  and  head,  of  observation  and 
experience,  of  self-knowledge  and  self-effacement 
that  would  hardly  be  believed  if  the' characters 
themselves  were  not  here  to  vouch  for  it.  Yet, 
even  if  we  omit  Shakespeare's*  minor  men  and 
women,  he  alone  is  the  author  of  two  hundred 
and  forty-six  distinct  and  well-known  characters. 
When  we  consider  the  variety  of  these  characters 
and  also  the  perfect  clearness  with  which  they 
are  protrayed,  we  are  compelled  to  give  Shake- 
speare the  preeminence  over  all  other  authors, 
ancient  and  modern.  In  George  Eliot's  novels 
the  distinct  characters  number  one  hundred  and 
seven;  in  the  novels  of  Dickens,  one  hundred  and 
two;  and  in  the  novels  of  Thackeray,  forty.     Thus 


74     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Shakespeare  has  created  almost  as  many  characters 
as  the  three  nineteenth-century  novelists  com- 
bined.* 

A  list  of  some  of  the  best  known  characters 
created  in  world-literature  will  help  us  to  realize 
what  a  wealth  of  material  for  the  study  of  human 
nature  this  kind  of  literature  affords.  No  two 
lists  would  be  alike.  Mine  at  least  is  brief.  It  is 
arranged  also  in  chronological  order  and  contains 
only  such  comment  as,  it  is  hoped,  may  lead 
you  to  the  original  sources  themselves.  Of  every 
character  mentioned  it  may  be  said  that  he  or  she 
is  better  known  from  the  inside  than  the  creator 
of  the  character  himself.  If  you  follow  out  this 
course  of  reading,  whether  alone  or  with  others, 
do  not  do  it  as  an  imposed  task.  Above  all  do 
not  read  as  if  you  had  to  stand  an  examination 
on  the  result.  Read  to  find  and  to  enrich  yourself 
in  a  larger  knowledge  of  human  nature.  Use 
translations  when  necessary  and  do  not  hesitate, 
if  you   so  desire,  to  skip  the  passages  or  pages 

*He  has  really  created  more.  "The  number  [two  hundred  and  forty-six] 
is  made  up  by  counting  only  those  which  have  in  the  reader's  mind  a  dis- 
tinct individuality,  and  omitting  the  following  plays  entirely:  RicRard  III, 
Timon  of  Athens,  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Henry  VIII,  and  the  three  parts  oi 
Henry  VI,  either  by  reason  of  some  doubt  of  Shakespeare's  entire  author- 
ship or  because  his  manner  of  sharply  outlining  a  character  and  definitely 
filling  it  out  is  not  evident  in  them."  —  Charles  F.  Johnson's  Elements  of 
Literary  Criticism. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     75 

from  which  your  hero  or  heroine  is  absent.  Read 
as  many  pages  as  possible  at  a  sitting,  keep  close 
to  the  trail  of  the  hunted  character,  and  then  try 
to  carry  the  knowledge  and  sympathy  thus  gained 
into  the  life  about  you. 

My  list  of  fifteen  includes  Ulysses  in  Homer's 
Iliad  and  especially  in  his  Odyssey*  King  Arthur 
in  Malory's  Morte  d1  Arthur\  and  Tennyson's 
Idylls  of  the  King,  Beatrice  in  Dante's  Divine 
Comedy,%  Don  Quixote  in  Cervantes's  Don 
Quixote**  Falstaff  in  Shakespeare's  Henry  IF 
(Parts  I  and  II)  and  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor, 
Hamlet  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  Prince  of 
Denmark,  Robinson  Crusoe  in  Daniel  Defoe's 
Robinson  Crusoe,  Faust  in  Goethe's  Faust, \% 
Leatherstocking    in    James     Fenimore     Cooper's 

*  William  Cullen  Bryant's  translations  of  d^e  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are 
the  simplest  translations  in  verse.  But  the  prose  translation  of  the  Iliad  by 
Leaf,  Lang,  and  Myers  and  of  the  Odyssey  by  Butcher  and  Lang  are  better 
still.  The  Story  of  the  Iliad  and  The  Story  of  the  Odyssey  by  Alfred  J.  Church 
are  helpful  introductory  books. 

fThere  is  a  good  edition  in  two  volumes  with  an  introduction  by  Sir 
John  Rhys  in  Everyman's  Library.  The  best  introductory  volume  is 
Sidney  Lanier's  The  Boy's  King  Arthur. 

|The  standard  translation  is  by  Henry  F.  Cary,  "to  whom,"  says  Ma- 
caulay,  "Dante  owes  more  than  ever  poet  owed  to  translator."  This 
translation  has  now  been  edited  and  brought  up  to  date  by  Oscar  Kuhns. 

**  An  excellent  edition  is  Don  Quixote  for  Use  in  Homes  and  Schools  by 
Clifton  Johnson.  The  standard  translation  is  by  Peter  Anthony  Motteux. 
It  is  published  in  two  volumes  in  Bohn's  Standard  Library  and  in  Every- 
man's Library. 

X\  The  standard  English  translation  is  by  Bayard  Taylor. 


76     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Leather  stocking  Tales,  Pippa  in  Robert  Brown- 
ing's Pippa  Passes,  Becky  Sharp  in  Thackeray's 
Vanity  Fair,  David  Copperfield  in  Dickens's 
David  Copperfield,  Silas  Alarner  in  George  Eliot's 
Silas  Marner,  Jean  \  aljean  in  Victor  Hugo's 
Les  Miserables,  and  Uncle  Remus  in  Joel  Chandler 
Harris's  Uncle  Remus:  His  Songs  and  His  Sayings, 
and  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus. 

I.  In  range  and  permanence  of  influence  upon 
mankind  in  general,  the  character  and  career  of 
Ulysses  remain  unrivalled.  Of  the  two  types  of 
character  represented  by  Ulysses  and  Achilles, 
Ulysses  seems  to  me  plainly  Homer's  favourite. 
Achilles  is  the  type  of  the  warrior-hero  cut  down 
in  his  prime  before  physical  prowess  had  begun 
to  yield  to  years  and  reflection.  Ulysses  is  the 
eternal  type  of  the  roving  hero,  familiar  with 
strange  lands  and  stranger  folk,  wise,  patient, 
eloquent,  and,  above  all,  resourceful.  "In  the 
Odyssey,"  says  Jebb,  "we  find  a  riper  moral  sense 
than  in  the  Iliad,  and  a  much  larger  number  of 
words  to  express  moral  distinctions."  But  it  was 
not  the  morality  or  the  immorality  of  Ulysses 
that  enthroned  him  in  the  Greek  consciousness. 
It  was  his  ability  to  shift  for  himself.  It  was  his 
fertility    in    devising   and    executing   things.     He 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     77 

became  the  permanent  chairman  of  the  Greek 
ways  and  means  committee.  He  was  the  first 
great  Greek  that  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it 
whole.  Hebrew  righteousness  was  not  his  nor 
the  Christian  ideal  of  service  to  others.  But  he 
had  in  him  the  stuff  on  which  efficient  righteous- 
ness must  build.  Every  year  of  his  wandering 
deprived  him  of  friends  and  helpers  till  at  last  he 
fronted  the  world  naked  and  alone.  But  neither 
gods  nor  men  nor  sirens  could  unsphere  him. 
His  resourcefulness  was  not  only  unfailing  but 
cumulative,  and  the  goal  that  beckoned  him  on  — 
the  thought  of  wife  and  son  —  invests  him  with 
a  human  interest  far  beyond  that  of  the  mere 
fighter. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  this  heroic  figure  helped  to 
mould  the  character  and  institutions  of  Greece. 
He  was  the  Great  Stone  Face  to  which  young  and 
old,  artists  and  statesmen,  looked  for  inspiration. 
His  strength  prophesied  greater  strength,  his 
wisdom  deeper  wisdom,  his  victories  a  nation's 
victories.  To  read  the  Odyssey  is  to  read  Greek 
history  in  prophecy,  and  human  nature  in  sum- 
mary. All  that  he  did  has  become  represen- 
tative and  has  wrought  itself  into  world-speech. 
"The  lotus-eaters,"  "the  Cyclops,"  "the  bag  of 


78     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

winds,"  "Circe's  enchantments,"  "the  Sirens' 
island,"  "Scylla  and  Charybdis,"  "Phaeacian  hos- 
pitality," "the  bow  of  Ulysses"  —  these  have 
become  channels  of  universal  thought.  The 
wandering  Jew  became  a  rover  because  he  had 
violated  a  divine  law,  Ulysses  is  a  world-traveller 
because  he  represents  an  eternal  quest,  of  the 
human  spirit. 

2.  King  Arthur  is  not  a  wanderer  —  he  is  not 
a  person  at  all.  He  is  a  cause,  re-shaped  by  every 
century  to  meet  its  own  needs.  All  through  the 
Middle  Ages  poets  and  prose  writers  vied  with  one 
another  in  exalting  Alexander  the  Great,  Charle- 
magne, and  King  Arthur.  About  each  of  these 
names  there  gathered  vast  story-cycles.  After 
the  Crusades,  however,  the  desire  was  felt  for  a 
character  that  would  express  in  a  popular  way 
the  knightly  ideals  of  Christian  chivalry.  Alex- 
ander the  Great  was  too  purely  pagan  for  this 
service,  and  Charlemagne's  career  was  too  well 
known.  By  a  kind  of  spiritual  instinct  the  poets 
and  romancers  of  Christendom  seemed  to  unite 
upon  King  Arthur.  Not  much  was  known  about 
him.  If  he  ever  lived  he  was  a  Welshman,  not 
an  Englishman.  The  tradition  is  that  he  fought 
a  losing  fight  against  the  incoming  Saxons,  but 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     79 

about  the  year  520  A.  D.  gained  a  notable  victory. 
Peace  followed,  then  insurrection,  then  the  defeat 
and  death  of  the  King. 

The  English-speaking  world  owes  its  knowledge 
of  King  Arthur  to  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  an  English 
knight,  who  prepared  a  prose  edition  of  these 
stories  in  1469.  It  was  called  Morte  d*  Arthur 
{The  Death  of  Arthur),  and  was  printed  by  the 
first  English  printer,  William  Caxton,  in  1485. 
Caxton  disliked  the  title  and  added  in  his  quaint 
English:  "Thus  endeth  this  noble  and  joyous 
book,  entitled  Le  Morte  d'  Arthur,  notwithstanding 
it  treateth  of  the  birth,  life,  and  acts  of  the  said 
King  Arthur,  of  his  noble  knights  of  the  Round 
Table,  their  marvellous  enterprises  and  advent- 
ures, the  achieving  of  the  Holy  Grail,  and,  in  the 
end,  the  dolorous  death  and  departing  out  of  this 
world  of  them  all."  Numerous  re-shapings  of 
Malory's  material  have  appeared  since  1485', 
some  in  drama,  some  in  opera,  some  in  short  story, 
some  in  epic  poetry,  some  in  lyric  poetry.  The 
best  known  is  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King. 
Tennyson's  contribution  to  the  legends  was  not  a 
clearer  portrait  of  the  King  but  a  more  modern 
interpretation  of  knightly  duty.  Arthur  was 
made  the  mouthpiece  of  the  new  ideals,  but  he 


So     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

remains  a  trifle  cold  and  impersonal.  In  fact  the 
character  of  the  King  still  waits  its  adjustment 
to  modern  needs.  His  tomb  at  Glastonbury 
contains  the  words,  "Here  lies  King  Arthur, 
a  King  that  was,  a  King  that  shall  be."  His  real 
coronation  will  come  later.  He  may  be  made  to 
sum  up  a  past,  to  interpret  a  present,  or  to  hint  a 
future.  His  last  battle  may  be  transferred  to 
alien  soils,  but  if  he  comes  into  his  own  he  will 
typify,  I  think,  the  immortality  of  lost  causes 
when  faith  and  honour  are  not  lost.  This  was  the 
idea  that  was  stirring  dimly  in  Malory's  imagina- 
tion when  he  named  his  book  not  The  Life  but 
The  Death  of  King  Arthur.  In  other  words,  the 
King's  last  battle  was  a  victorious  defeat. 

3.  King  Arthur  and  Beatrice  are  both  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  but  there  the  resemblance  ends. 
King  Arthur  represents  a  conception  only  partly 
worked  out,  Beatrice  an  ideal  completely  worked 
out.  King  Arthur  belongs  to  no  author,  but  if 
Dante  be  taken  literally,  Beatrice  inspired  him 
no  less  than  he  immortalized  her.  The  close- 
ness and  spiritual  beauty  of  the  relationship 
between  the  two  find  no  parallel  in  literature. 
Boccaccio,  who,  as  a  little  boy,  may  have  seen 
the   great   poet,    tells   us    that   Dante  ^  first   met 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     81 

Beatrice  at  a  May  festival  in  the  year  1274. 
"From  that  time  forward"  says  Dante,  "love 
quite  governed  my  soul.  .  .  .  And  here  it  is 
fitting  for  me  to  depart  a  little  from  this  present 
matter,  that  it  may  be  rightly  understood  of  what 
surpassing  virtue  her  salutation  was  to  me.  To 
the  which  end  I  say  that  when  she  appeared  in  any 
place,  it  seemed  to  me,  by  the  grace  of  her  excellent 
salutation,  that  no  man  was  my  enemy  any  longer; 
and  such  warmth  of  charity  ^came  upon  me  that 
most  certainly  in  that  moment  I  would  have 
pardoned  whosoever  had  done  me  an  injury;  and 
if  one  should  then  have  questioned  me  concerning 
any  matter,  I  could  only  have  said  unto  him 
'Love,'  with  a  countenance  clothed  in  humble- 
ness." He  bids  farewell  to  her  in  Paradise  in 
these  words: 

O  lady!  thou  in  whom  my  hopes  have  rest, 
Who,  for  my  safety,  didst  not  scorn  to  leave 
In  Hell  the  traces  of  thy  footsteps  marked,  — 
For  all  mine  eyes  have  seen  I  to  thy  power 
And  goodness,  virtue  owe  and  grace.     From  slave 
Thou  hast  to  freedom  brought  me,  and  no  means, 
For  my  deliverance  apt,  hast  left  untried. 
Thy  liberal  graciousness  still  to  me  keep, 
That,  when  my  spirit,  which  thou  madest  whole, 
Is  loosened  from  this  body,  it  may  find 
Favour  with  thee. 


82     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Between  the  meeting  and  the  farewell  lie  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  Dante's  life  work. 
She  was  the  inspiration  both  of  The  New  Life 
and  of  The  Divine  Comedy.  It  was  at  Beatrice's 
request  that  Virgil,  who  represents  reason,  guided 
Dante  through  Hell  and  Purgatory  as  far  as 
unaided  reason  could  lead,  and  it  was  Beatrice 
herself  that  led  him  through  Paradise.  The  chief 
difference  between  the  punishments  in  Hell  and  in 
Purgatory  is  that  in  Hell  they  are  accompanied  by 
loud  outcries  and  blasphemies,  while  in  Purgatory 
the  sufferers  sing  the  sweet  old  hymns  of  hope  and 
praise.  In  the  highest  circle  of  Paradise  is  the 
Virgin  Mary,  in  the  second  circle  Eve,  in  the  third 
Rachel  with  Beatrice.  Longfellow,  in  his  beautiful 
sonnet  on  the  Divina  Commedia,  the  "mediaeval 
miracle  of  song,"  whose  lines 

Are  footpaths  for  the  thought  of  Italy, 

compares  Dante's  work  to  a  dim,  restful  cathedral: 

So,  as  I  enter  here  from  day  to  day 

And  leave  my  burden  at  this  minster  gate, 

Kneeling  in  prayer,  and  not  ashamed  to  pray, 

The  tumult  of  the  time  disconsolate 

To  inarticulate  murmurs  dies  away, 

While  the  eternal  ages  watch  and  wait. 

But  the  most  radiant  figure  in  the  great  cathe- 
dral, as  in  the  life  of  its  builder,  is  Beatrice  Por- 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     83 

tinari.  She  is  still  the  most  spiritual  presence  in 
the  world's  picture-gallery,  the  incarnation  of  that 
romantic  conception  of  ideal  love  that  etherealized 
and  ennobled  the  aspirations  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

4.  The  variety  of  creative  achievement  that 
world-fiction  presents  could  hardly  be  better  shown 
than  in  the  contrast  between  Beatrice  and  Don 
Quixote.  The  latter,  however,  is  as  safely  im- 
mortal as  the  former.  If  Beatrice  sums  up  the 
ideals  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Don  Quixote  announces 
the  passing  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  coming 
of  our  own  time.  If  in  Ulysses  we  study  a  race, 
in  Don  Quixote  we  study  an  institution.  If  King 
Arthur  stands  for  chivalry  in  flower,  Don  Quixote 
stands  for  its  decline  and  fall.  Cervantes  published 
the  first  part  of  Don  Quixote  in  1605,  the  second 
part  in  161 5.  His  purpose  was  "to  render  ab- 
horred of  men  the  false  and  absurd  stories  con- 
tained in  books  of  chivalry."  Not  the  spirit  of 
chivalry  but  the  perversion  of  that  spirit  was  the 
point  of  attack  with  Cervantes. 

Don  Quixote  himself  is  one  of  the  most  lovable 
men  in  fiction.  He  is  gentle,  true,  brave,  pure, 
and  considerate  of  others.  But  he  is  a  mono- 
maniac. "At  last,"  says  Cervantes,  "he  gave 
himself  up  so  wholly  to  the  reading  of  romances 


84     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

that  at  night  he  would  pore  over  them  until  it  was 
day,  and  by  day  he  would  read  on  until  it  was 
night.  Thus  by  sleeping  little  and  reading  much, 
the  moisture  of  his  brain  was  exhausted  to  that 
extent  that  at  last  he  lost  the  use  of  his  reason. 
A  world  of  disorderly  notions,  picked  out  of  his 
books,  crowded  into  his  imagination,  and  now  his 
head  was  full  of  nothing  but  enchantments, 
quarrels,  battles,  challenges,  wounds,  complaints, 
amours,  tournaments,  and  abundance  of  stuff 
and  impossibilities,  insomuch  that  all  the  fables 
and  fantastical  tales  which  he  read  seemed  to  him 
as  true  as  the  most  authentic  histories. 
Having  thus  lost  his  understanding,  he  unluckily 
stumbled  upon  the  oddest  fancy  that  ever  entered 
unto  a  madman's  brain;  for  now  he  thought  it 
proper  and  necessary,  as  well  for  the  increase 
of  his  own  honour  as  for  the  service  of  the  public, 
to  turn  knight-errant  and  roam  through  the 
whole  world,  armed  cap-a-pie  and  mounted  on  his 
steed,  in  quest  of  adventures." 

After  many  years  spent  with  his  squire,  Sancho 
Panza,  in  foolish  contests  with  windmills,  inn- 
keepers, funeral  processions,  goat-herds,  lions, 
prisoners,  and  what  not,  he  falls  sick  and  shortly 
before   death    recovers    his   reason.     In   the   last 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     85 

chapter  he  is  made  to  say:  "My  judgment  is 
now  free  and  clear,  and  themurky  clouds  of  igno- 
rance are  dissipated  which  my  continual  reading 
of  those  detestable  books  of  knight-errantry  cast 
over  me.  Now  I  perceive  their  nonsense  and 
deceit  and  am  only  sorry  the  discovery  happens 
so  late,  when  I  lack  time  to  make  amends  by  read- 
ing others  that  might  enlighten  my  soul.  I  find, 
niece,  that  I  am  at  the  point  of  death  and  I  would 
meet  it  in  such  a  manner  as  to  show  that  my  life 
has  not  been  so  evil  as  to  leave  me  the  reputation 
of  a  madman.  ...  I  am  now  an  enemy  to 
Amadis  de  Gaul*  and  all  the  endless  crowd  of  his 
descendants.  All  the  profane  stories  of  knight- 
errantry  are  hateful  to  me.  I  have  a  sense  of  my 
folly  and  the  danger  I  have  run  by  reading  them. 
And  now,  through  heaven's  mercy  and  my  own 
experience,  I  abhor  them." 

The  government  of  Spain  had  long  considered 
the  propriety  of  burning  all  knight-errantry 
romances,  but  after  the  appearance  of  Don  Quixote 
no  others  were  published.  The  book  attained  a 
popularity  unequalled  by  any  other  book  up  to 
that  time.     Its  hero  and  his  squire  represent  two 


*  When  Cervantes  wrote  Don  Quixote,  the  chivalric  adventures  of  Amadis 
de  Gaul  had  been  spun  out  to  a  length  of  fifty  volumes. 


86     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

unchanging  types  of  character.  Don  Quixote 
is  the  man  of  imagination  without  common  sense, 
while  Sancho  Panza  is  the  man  of  common  sense 
without  imagination.  Never  before  had  these  two 
types  been  so  appealingly  portrayed.  To  read 
between  the  lines  in  this  book  is  to  understand  the 
old  conflict  of  the  impossible-sublime  with  the 
commonplace-possible  and  to  feel  anew  the  pity 
and  the  pathos  of  one-sidedness. 

No  one  knows  when  Cervantes  was  born,  but 
he  and  Shakespeare  both  died  on  April  23,  1616. 
Cervantes  lives  chiefly  by  one  character,  Shake- 
speare by  so  many  that  it  is  difficult  to  make 
choice.  Two,  however,  stand  out  above  the  rest: 
F«JstafT  and  Hamlet.  Brunetiere  declared  a  few 
years  ago  that  great  creative  writers  usually  por- 
tray one  or  more  "sympathetic  characters,"  the 
sympathetic  character  being  the  character  that 
best  represents  the  author's  own  point  of  view. 
Falstaff  and  Hamlet,  he  thought,  were  the  two 
characters  with  whom,  whether  consciously  or  not, 
the  dramatist  was  most  in  sympathy.  This  is 
an  interesting  theory,  though  for  myself  I  should 
name  Hamlet  and  Prospero*  as  the  two  most 
Shakespearean  characters.  '  Falstaff  and  Hamlet, 

*See  Shakespeare's  Tempest. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     87 

however,  are  undoubtedly  the  best  illustrations 
of  Shakespeare's  range.  They  are  illustrations  also 
of  the  wealth  of  material  that  the  student  of  human 
nature  may  find  in  fiction. 

5.  Falstaff  and  Don  Quixote  have  often  been 
bracketed  together  as  the  most  laughter-provoking 
characters  in  modern  literature.  So  they  are, 
doubtless,  but  with  a  difference.  Cervantes  him- 
self does  not  seem  to  me  a  humourist  at  heart. 
I  think  of  him  as  one  who  remembered  easily  and 
used  aptly  all  the  good  stories  that  he  had  heard, 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  he  could  create  humour 
at  will.  He  could  combine  and  adapt  with  effort- 
less facility,  but  creation  [s  something  essen- 
tially different.  Certainly  Don  Quixote  is  not  at 
bottom  a  humourist;  he  is  funny  only  when  under 
the  mad  obsession  of  an  outworn  institution.  In 
his  normal  stay-at-home  moods  he  is  at  the  utmost 
remove  from  humour  or  wit  or  brilliancy  of  *any 
kind.  He  is  not  a  complex  character  at  all.  But 
Falstaff  is  more  complex  than  Hamlet.  He  has 
about  him  the  suggestion  of  a  gentleman  and  the 
instincts  of  a  scholar,  but  when  his  hair  is  white 
he  is  the  leader  of  a  crew  of  ignorant  and  lawless 
tavern  roisterers.  His  very  essence,  however, 
is    humorous    vivacity.     He    does    not    suggest 


88     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

repetitions  or  adaptations:  he  can  create  humour 
at  any  time,  in  any  society,  at  any  crisis.  "If 
anybody,"  says  Walter  Bagehot,  "could  have  any 
doubt  about  the  liveliness  of  Shakespeare,  let 
them  consider  the  character  of  Falstaff.  When 
a  man  has  created  that  without  a  capacity  for 
laughter,  then  a  blind  man  may  succeed  in  de- 
scribing colours.  Intense  anuria]^ spirits,  are  the 
single  sentiment  (if  they  be  a  sentiment)  of  the 
entire  character.  If  most  men  were  to  save  up  ah 
the  gaiety  of  their  whole  lives,  it  would  come  about 
to  the  gaiety  of  one  speech  in  Falstaff.  A  morose 
man  might  have  amassed  mary  jokes,  might  have 
observed  many  details  of  jovial  society,  might 
have  conceived  a  Sir  John,  marked  by  rotundity 
of  body,  but  could  hardly  have  imagined  what  we 
call  his  rotundity  of  mind.  We  mean  that  the 
animal  spirits  of  Falstaff  give  him  an  easy,  vague, 
diffusive  sagacity  which  is  peculiar  to  him." 

And  yet,  singularly  enough,  the  word  honour 
unites  and  explains  the  diverse  careers  and  char- 
acters of  Don  Quixote  and  Falstaff.  Don  Quixote 
sees  life  through  the  convex  mirror  of  an  utterly 
fantastic  sense  of  honour.  This  and  this  alone 
makes  him  funny.  Falstaff  is  funny  because  he 
believes  and    practises    the  theory  that  there  is 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     89 

no  such  thing  as  honour.  "Can  honour  set-to 
a  leg?"  he  asks.  "No.  Or  an  arm?  No.  Or  take 
away  the  grief  of  a  wound  ?  No.  Honour  hath  no 
skill  in  surgery,  then?  No.  What  is  honour?  A 
word.  What  is  in  that  word  honour?  What  is  that 
honour?  Air.  A  trim  reckoning!  Who  hath  it? 
He  that  died  o'  Wednesday.  Doth  he  feel  it? 
No.  Doth  he  hear  it?  No.  'Tis  insensible, 
then.  Yea,  to  the  dead  But  will  it  not  live 
with  the  living?  No.  Why?  Detraction  will  not 
suffer  it.  Therefore  I'll  none  of  it.  Honour  is  a 
mere  scutcheon:  and  so  ends  my  catechism." 

Falstaff' s  creed,  in  other  words,  is  the  creed  of 
the  five  senses.  Beyond  them  he  sees  nothing  in 
life  and  practises  nothing  in  conduct.  He  is  not 
only  an  out-and-out  materialist  but  denies  defiantly 
the  existence  of  the  moral  law.  Against  it  he 
levels  all  the  batteries  of  his  wit,  but  the  moral 
law  wins  out  in  the  end.  In  spite  of  the  fascina- 
tion which  Falstaff  exercises  over  those  whom  he 
meets,  he  fails  utterly  with  Henry  V  as  soon  as 
responsibility  has  developed  in  the  young  monarch 
a  real  sense  of  honour.  Their  meeting  is  now  the 
meeting  of  opposites  and  the  result  is  inevitable. 
Henry  V  does  not  so  much  throw  off  Falstaff  as 
rise   beyond   his    reach.     And   yet   Falstaff   con- 


9o     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

tributes  something  worth  while  to  morality  as  well 
as  to  humour.  He  looked  on  himself  not  only 
as  witty,  but  as  "the  cause  that  wit  is  in  other 
men."  So  he  was,  but  he  was  more.  "Humour," 
says  Moulton,  "is  an  essential  for  a  censor  of  mor- 
als; no  one  is  in  a  state  to  discuss  literary  moral- 
ity unless  he  can  lay  his  hand  on  his  heart  and 
vow  that  he  loves  Shakespeare's  Falstaff. " 

6.  We  are  not  all  Falstaffs  or  Don  Quixotes, but 
we  are  all,  at  times,  Hamlets.  Indeed  the  character 
of  Hamlet  is  far  better  understood  to-day  than 
when  Shakespeare  created  it.  It  at  least  ought 
to  be,  for  it  has  not  lacked  for  students.  The  dis- 
tinguishing thing  about  Hamlet  is  that  he  broke  no 
moral  law,  violated  none  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, but  yet  vastly  enlarged  the  area  of  wrong- 
doing. All  the  bloodshed  in  the  play,  except  the 
original  crime  that  precedes  the  rise  of  the  curtain, 
is  due  to  Hamlet  —  not  to  what  he  does  but  to 
what  he  does  not  do.     Hamlet  takes  Hood's  lines, 

Evil  is  wrought  by  want  of  thought 
As  well  as  want  of  heart, 

and  makes  them  read, 

Evil  is  wrought  by  too  much  thought 
As  well  as  want  of  heart. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     91 

And  yet  Hamlet  is  the  most  variously  gifted 
man  that  Shakespeare  has  portrayed.  He  is 
eloquent  in  speech,  profound  in  thought,  a  rare 
revealer  of  individuality  in  others,  a  man  of  virtue 
and  integrity,  "the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould 
of  form."  He  sees  so  deeply  into  things  and  has 
such  a  gift  of  phrase  that  almost  all  of  his  utter- 
ances pass  still  as  current  coin  in  the  marts  of  the 
world's  thought.  He  is  thirty  years  old,  is  fresh 
from  the  great  Protestant  University  of  Witten- 
berg, and  eager  to  return. 

But  just  here  lies  the  special  challenge  of  Ham- 
let's character:  out  of  the  two  hundred  and  forty- 
six  men  and  women  that  Shakespeare  has  created 
Hamlet  is  the  only  scholar,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  only  character  that  brings  about  the  final 
tragedy  by  inaction.  Did  the  great  dramatist 
mean  nothing  by  this  combination  of  scholarship 
and  inefficiency?  Did  he  not  mean  to  say  that 
he  saw  from  the  life  about  him  that  there  was  an 
education  that  did  not  educate,  a  culture  that 
ministered  to  the  reflective  and  emotional  faculties 
but,  leaving  the  will  flaccid  and  impotent,  rendered 
prompt  action  impossible?  Dryden  describes 
Hamlet  when  he  makes  one  of  the  characters  in 
The  Conquest  of  Grenada  say, 


92     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

I  scarcely  understand  my  own  intent, 

But,  silkworm-like,  so  long  within  have  wrought 

That  I  am  lost  in  my  own  web  of  thought. 

Men  of  this  type — and  they  are  usually  teachers, 
writers,  bookmen,  men  of  sedentary  life  —  cannot 
do  because  they  see  so  many  possible  ways  of 
doing.  It  is  easier  to  plan,  to  intend,  to  dream, 
because  mere  thinking  requires  no  fitting  of 
awkward  tools:  it  is  complete  in  itself.  Action, 
however,  is  always  incomplete,  always  a  few  steps 
behind  the  master,  thought.  We  may  say  of  Ham- 
let what  Emerson  said  of  Thoreau:  "Wherever 
there  is  knowledge,  wherever-there  is  virtue,  wher- 
ever there  is  beauty,  he  will  find  a  home."  But 
wherever  there  is  the  body  of  action  as  well  as 
the  wing  of  thought,  wherever  life  is  viewed  not 
as  a  problem  to  be  forever  probed  but  as  a  duty 
to  be  instantly  done,  there  will  Hamlet  be  for- 
ever barred. 

7.  It  used  to  be  thought  that  Hamlet  was  in- 
tended only  for  mature  minds,  Robinson  Crusoe 
only  for  immature.  But  both  make  their  appeal 
to  young  and  old  alike,  for  both  are  revelations  of 
life, and  life  is  a  continuous  process,  Robinson  Cru- 
soe was  written  by  Daniel  Defoe  in  17 19,  and 
is  now  the  most  popular  boy  book  in  literature. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     93 

Coleridge  once  said  that  "the  three  most  perfect 
plots  ever  planned"  were  the  CEdipus  Tyrannus 
by  Sophocles,  The  Alchemist  by  Ben  Jonson,  and 
Tom  Jones  by  Henry  Fielding.  In  modern 
literature  the  three  most  suggestive  situations 
seem  to  me  Robinson  Crusoe,  Faust,  and  The 
Leather  stocking  Tales.  There  is  little  or  no  plot 
in  any  of  these.  The  interest  is  in  the  leading 
character,  who  is  placed  in  a  situation  that  appeals 
powerfully.to  our  interest  in  human  nature. 

Robinson  Crusoe  is  the  story  of  a  man  who  has 
to  start  life  over  again  without  the  help  of  social 
institutions,  civil  institutions,  educational  institu- 
tions, industrial  institutions,  or  institutions  of  any 
kind.  He  falls  back  and  •  down  through  the 
centuries  till  he  finds  himself  face  to  face  with 
nature.  He  has  to  fight  for  bare  existence.  He 
is  Adam  without  an  Eve  for  a  helpmeet  or  a  garden 
ready  made  to  his  hand.  Can  a  man  live  under 
these  conditions?  If  so,  what  can  he  get  out  of 
life?  Ulysses  found  himself  for  a  short  time  in 
a  similar  plight,  but  he  was  aided  by  gods  and 
goddesses.  Robinson,  it  is  true,  saves  a  few  things 
from  the  wreck,  but  not  enough  to  alter  the 
problem.  He  is  still  individualism  battling  with- 
out the  aid  of  institutionalism.     Rousseau  was  so 


94     WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

impressed  by  the  educative  qualities  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  that  he  thought  boys  should  read  no  other 
book  till  they  were  fourteen  years  of  age.  No  one, 
he  contended,  could  be  a  useful  member  of  society 
or  cooperate  helpfully  with  others  until  by  devel- 
oping his  own  individuality  he  had  learned  to 
stand  alone.  Hence,  "Emile"  —  he  is  Rousseau's 
model  pupil  —  "exacts  nothing  from  others  and 
never  thinks  of  owing  anything  to  them.  He 
is  alone  in  human  society  and  depends  solely  on 
himself." 

Education,  however,  does  not  mean  isolation.  It 
does  not  mean  self-development  away  from  society. 
Education  ought  to  make  a  man  good  company  for 
himself,  but  it  ought  also  to  relate  him  to  the  best 
company  anywhere.  Huxley's  ideal  is  the  right 
one:  "Since  each  child  is  a  member  of  a  social  and 
political  organization  of  great  complexity,  and  has, 
in  future,  to  fit  himself  into  that  organization  or 
be  crushed  by  it,  it  is  needful  not  only  that  boys 
and  girls  should  be  made  acquainted  with  the  ele- 
mentary laws  of  conduct,  but  that  their  affections 
should  be  trained  so  as  to  love  with  all  their  hearts 
that  conduct  which  tends  to  the  attainment  of 
the  highest  good  for  themselves  and  their  fellow- 
men,  and  to  hate  with  all  their  hearts  that  opposite 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     95 

course  of  action  which  is  fraught  with  evil." 
Robinson  had  no  opportunity  to  shape  his  conduct 
with   regard   to  others.     There   were   no  others, 

ut  he  remains  none  the  less  one  of  the  great 
figures  in  the  world's  fiction.  He  is  a  constant 
reminder  that  we  underrate  what  we  can  do  for 
ourselves  and  overrate  what  others  can  do  for  us. 
Every  chapter  in  Robinson  Crusoe  is  and  has  been 
for  nearly  two  hundred  years  a  challenge  to 
courage,  to  initiative,  to  self-reliance,  to  self- 
development  —  in  a  word,  to  constructive  individ- 
ualism. Many,  imitations  of  Defoe's  book  have 
been  published,  but  not  one  of  them  has  stated  the 
problem  so  well  or  illustrated  it  so  convincingly. 

8.  The  situation  in  Goethe's  Faust  is  entirely 
different  except  that  in  both  books  the  two  heroes 
are  subjected  to  a  long  and  severe  testing  and  come 
out  of  it  victoriously.  Goethe's  masterpiece  marks 
not  only  thejiighest  reach  of  its  author's  genius  but 
the  highest  reach  of  modern  thought  about  human 
nature.  The  situation,  however,  and  the  problem 
presented  are  simple  enough  for  any  child  to  under- 
stand. Faust  is  a  scholar  and  investigator  who 
cannot  find  satisfaction  for  his  spirit.  His  ideals 
of  happiness  and  attainment  are  far  beyond  what 
he  has  been  able  to  achieve.     At  last  he  enters 


96    what  can  literature  do  for  me 

into  a  contract  with  Satan.     "Take  me  in  charge," 

he  says,  "  and  tempt  me  with  all  the  pleasures  of 

mind   and   body   at   your  disposal.     If  you   can 

satisfy  my  innate  desires,  if  you  can  make  me  say 

to  any  passing  moment,  'Stay,  thou  art  so  fair,' 

then  bind   my  soul  in   your  bonds"      Hamlet's 

testing,    after    receiving    the    message    from    the 

ghost,  extended  through  two  and  a  half  months; 

Robinson  Crusoe  remained  on  his  lonely  island 

twenty-seven  years;  Faust  journeys  with  Satan 

for  fifty  years.     "The  little  world  and  then  the 

great  we'll   see,"   Satan   had   said.     During  this 

time  he  enjoys  every  delight  that  his  imagination 

craves  —  banquetings,   revellings,   woman's  love, 

the  revelations  of  magic,  comradeship  with  nature, 

the  achievements  of  intellect,  and  the  witchery 

of  all  forms  of  beauty.     But  in  every  experience 

Faust  is  either  disgusted  or  in   the  moment  of 

enjoyment    feels    the    call    to    something    higher. 

He   might  well   have   said,   as   Tennyson   makes 

Ulysses  say: 

Yet  all  experience  is  an  arch  wherethrough 
Gleams  that  untravelled  world  whose  margin  fades 
Forever  and  forever  when  I  move. 

But  broadened  and  ennobled  by  his  struggles, 
Faust    enters   at   last   upon   the    joy   of    serving 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     07 

others.  Though  blind  and  a  hundred  years  old, 
the  climbing  mood  is  still  dominant  within  him. 
Having  obtained  a  bit  of  seashore,  he  redeems  it 
from  the  waves  and  colonizes  it  with  happy  la- 
bourers. He  had  begun  this  work  merely  to 
exhibit  the  victory  of  mind  over  nature.  But 
as  it  progresses  he  is  conscious  of  a  happiness 
unknown  before.  His  spirit  glows  at  the  thought 
of  the  good  that  he  is  doing  and  of  the  millions 
who  in  after  ages  will  labour  fruitfully  and  grate- 
fully on  the  land  that  he  has  rescued.  He  has 
passed  from  the  ideal  of  Longfellow's  Excelsior  to — 
the  ideal  of  Lanier's  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee.  If 
he  could  only  look  down  the  ages  and  see  this  free 
people  on  a  free  soil,  he  would  be  willing  to  say 
to  the  moment,  "Stay,  thou  art  so  fair."  But  the 
time  will  come 

And  in  sure  prospect  of  such  lofty  bliss, 
I  now  enjoy  the  highest  moment  —  this  ! 

He  falls  dead,  Satan  orders  his  minions  to  seize 

the  ascending  soul,  but  the  angels  bear  it  aloft 

singing: 

The  noble  spirit  now  is  free 
And  saved  from  evil  scheming. 
Whoe'er  aspires  unweariedly 
Is  not  beyond  redeeming. 


o8    what  can  literature  do  for  me 

And  if  he  feels  the  grace  of  love 
That  from  on  high  is  given, 
The  blessed  hosts  that  wait  above 
Shall  welcome  him  to  heaven. 

"In  these  lines,"  said  Goethe,  "the  key  to 
Faust's  rescue  may  be  found  —  in  Faust  himself 
an  ever  higher  and  purer  form  of  activity  to  the 
end,  and  the  eternal  love  coming  down  to  his  aid 
from  above.  This  is  entirely  in  harmony  with 
our  religious  ideas,  according  to  which  we  are 
saved  not  by  our  own  strength  alone  but  by  and 
through  the  freely  bestowed  grace  of  God." 

In  the  old  Faust  legends  the  compact  was  that 
Faust  should  have  whatever  he  desired  for  twenty 
years  and  then  surrender  body  and  soul  to  Satan. 
What  a  wealth  of  spiritual  truth  and  stimulating 
idealism  Goethe  has  poured  into  the  old  mould  of 
the  fable!  There  was  no  invisible  goal  in  the  old 
legend.  The  reader  or  spectator  knew  in  advance 
what  was  coming.  He  had  only  to  wait  in  shud- 
dering awe  till  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  the 
Devil  claimed  his  own.  But  in  Goethe's  hands 
the  story  becomes  a  new  gospel.  Mankind  is 
Faust.  Satan  is  a  spirit  that  "always  wills  the 
bad  and  always  works  the  good."  What  an 
illuminating    thought    that    is!     Many    solutions 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     99 

of  the  problem  were  possible.  Faust  might  have 
said  "Stay"  (1)  to  some  moment  of  physical 
pleasure,  (2)  to  some  moment  of  intellectual 
achievement,  (3)  to  some  moment  of  artistic 
enjoyment,  or  (4)  to  some  moment  of  victory  for 
others.  He  said  "Stay"  to  none  of  these.  His 
ideal  was  still  in  the  ascendant.  He  said  "Stay" 
not  to  a  present  moment  but  to  a  moment  of 
unselfish  achievement  yet  to  be.  Tennyson  at- 
tempted to  characterize  Goethe's  work  in  these 
lines: 

I  held  it  truth,  with  him  who  sings 
To  one  clear  harp  in  divers  tones, 
That  men  may  rise  on  stepping-stones 
Of  their  dead  selves  to  higher  things. 

A  better  summary  would  be: 

Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
Or  what's  a  heaven  for? 

9.  Faust  is  the  best  known  character  that  Ger- 
man literature  has  produced,  and  Leatherstocking 
is  the  best  known  character  that  American  litera- 
ture has  produced.*    Both  are  types,  the  one  of  life 

*  American  literature  has  produced  only  a  few  characters  well  known 
beyond  our  own  borders.  The  best  known  seem  to  me  Washington  Irving's 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  Cooper's  Leatherstocking,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Uncle 
Tom,  Harris's  Uncle  Remus,  and  Mark  Twain's  Huckleberry  Finn  and  Tom 
Sawyer.  Benjamin  Franklin's  Poor  Richard  is  more  a  piece  of  practical 
advice  than  a  bit  of  human  nature. 


ioo  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

in  its  universal  aspects,  the  other  of  life  in  its  ele- 
mental aspects.  If  Faust  found  his  highest  pleasure 
in  making  a  " clearing"  for  coming  generations  to 
colonize,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  this  was 
Leatherstocking's  life  work.  If  Faust  stands  more 
distinctively  for  the  spirit  of  idealism^that  has 
made  Germany  what  it  is,  Leatherstocking  stands 
for  the  pioneer  spirit,  and  the  pioneer  spirit  has 
done  more  than  anything  else  to  make  our  country 
what  it  is.  Cooper  used  to  say:  "If  anything 
from  the  pen  of  the  author  is  at  all  to  outlive  him- 
self, it  is  unquestionably  the  series  of  The  Leather- 
stocking  Tales."  He  called  these  stories — The 
Deerslayer,  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  The  Path- 
finder, The  Pioneers,  and  The  Prairie  —  "a  drama 
in  five  acts."  And  so  they  are  —  the  greatest 
drama  that  America  has  to  show.  They  drama- 
tize the  westward  movement  of  American  civiliza- 
tion and  cover  the  years  from  1743  to  1804.  These 
sixty  years  were  the  romantic  period  of  American 
history,  and  Cooper  has  made  them  a  part  of  the 
inspirational  heritage  not  only  of  the  American 
people  but  of  all  civilized  people.  "He  has  earned 
a  fame  wider,  I  think,"  said  William  Cullen 
Bryant,  "than  any  author  of  modern  times; 
certainly  than  any  author  of  any  age  ever  enjoyed 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   ioi 

in  his  lifetime."  Time  has  confirmed  this  judg- 
ment. There  is  now  no  geographical  frontier  on 
our  map  and  therefore  no  leatherstockinged 
pioneer.  The  geographical  frontier  ceased  to  be 
in  1890.  But  there  were  never  so  many  frontiers 
of  thought  or  of  national  effort.  A  geographical 
meridian  has  become  an  intellectual  meridian  and 
Cooper's  pioneer  has  become  the  type  of  those 
elemental  qualities  that  give  distinctive  promise 
to  American  history. 

All  this  is  summed  up  in  the  single  character 
of  Leatherstocking.  "I  am  not  sure,"  said  Balzac, 
"if  the  entire  work  of  Walter  Scott  furnishes  a 
creation  as  noble  [grandiose]  as  this  hero  of  the 
plains  and  forests."  Thackeray  was  of  the  same 
opinion.  Compare  Leatherstocking  with  other 
characters  standing  on  national  horizons.  If  the 
Greeks  had  followed  lap  the  actual  trail  of  Ulysses 
and  colonized  in  his  wake,  he  would  be  to  Greek 
history  what  Leatherstocking  is  to  our  history. 
If  England  had  moved  over  to  Trinidad  and  built 
upon  Robinson  Crusoe's  foundations,  he  would 
have  been  the  English  prototype  of  Leatherstock- 
ing. If  Robin  Hood  had  been  less  of  a  buccaneer 
and  had  not  owed  his  popularity  (as  Dowden 
reminds  us)  to  the  fact  that  he  was  "the  reputed 


102   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Earl  of  Huntingdon,"  he  would  bear  democratic 
comparison  with  Leatherstocking.  If  Scott's 
border-chieftains  had  seen  life  through  a  some- 
what wider  angle,  if  they  had  looked  upon  border- 
lines as  something  more  than  petty  battle-lines 
of  inherited  enmities,  they  too  would  have  been 
predecessors  of  Leatherstocking.  But  Scott's 
border-line  points  backward,  Cooper's  forward. 
The  significance  of  Leatherstocking  will  increase 
in  exact  proportion  as  America  increases.  He 
reproduces  the  past,  but  he  belongs  to  the  future. 

10.  Leatherstocking  can  be  identified  in  part 
at  least  with  Daniel  Boone.  Our  next  character, 
Browning's  Pippa,  is  a  pure  product  of  the  imagi- 
nation. "Mr.  Browning,"  says  Mrs.  Orr,  "was 
walking  alone  in  a  wood  near  Dulwich,  when  the 
image  flashed  upon  him  of  some  one  walking  thus 
alone  through  life,  one  apparently  too  obscure 
to  leave  a  trace  of  his  or  her  passage,  yet  exercising 
a  lasting  though  unconscious  influence  at  every 
step  of  it;  and  the  image  shaped  itself  into  the 
little  silk-winder  of  Asolo,  Felippa  or  Pippa." 
This  is  the  motive,  the  unconscious  influence  of 
good  over  evil,  that  gives  unity  to  Pippa  Passes, 
but  Pippa  herself  is  more,  far  more,  than  the 
embodiment  of  this  one  idea. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME  103 

It  is  New  Year's  day  and  Pippa  springing  out 
of  bed  determines  to  spend  her  one  holiday  in  the 
year  singing  through  the  streets,  as  if  she  were  in 
turn  "the  happiest  four  in  our  Asolo. "  But  these 
happiest  four  are,  at  the  moment  Pippa  passes, 
the  four  most  miserable  or  perplexed  in  Asolo. 
Her  four  joyous  songs,  sung  at  morning,  noon, 
evening,  and  night,  find  "the  happiest  four"  at 
the  critical  moment  of  their  lives  —  find  them  and 
save  them.  This  is  the  framework  of  a  little 
drama  as  perfect  in  its  symmetry  as  it  is  beautiful 
in  its  unfolding.  Notice,  if  you  have  not,  that  in 
every  case  Pippa's  songs  are  not  merely  external 
influences.  They  blend  with  the  better  nature, 
already  half  awakened,  of  the  person  that  hears 
them.  They  are  not  causative  but  cooperative. 
They  are  like  the  ghosts  and  dreams  in  Shakes- 
peare: they  do  not  compel  action,  they  only  help 
it  to  crystallize.  No  one  can  read  this  poem  with- 
out realizing  more  deeply  the  radiating  and  trans- 
forming power  of  mere  joyousness.  Joy  like 
Pippa's  is  as  good  as  goodness  and  more  contag- 
ious. No  one  can  read  it  without  realizing,  too, 
the  influence  in  his  life  —  in  all  life  —  of  certain 
significant,  tidal,  malleable  momentsv  In  these 
moments  the  thoughts  and  feelings  and  tendencies 


io4  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

of  years  seem  suddenly  to  mature.  The  best 
introduction  to  Pippa  Passes  is  found  in  Emerson's 
Over-Soul:  "There  is  a  vast  difference  between 
one  and  another  hour  of  life  in  their  authority  and 
subsequent  effect.  Our  faith  comes  in  moments; 
our  vice  is  habitual.  Yet  there  is  a  depth  in  those 
brief  moments  which  constrains  us  to  ascribe 
morp  reality  to  them  than  to  all  other  experiences. 
For  this  reason  the  argument  which  is  always 
forthcoming  to  silence  those  who  conceive  extra- 
ordinary hopes  of  man,  namely,  the  appeal  to 
experience,  is  forever  invalid  and  vain.  A  might- 
ier hope  abolishes  despair.  We  give  up  the  past 
to  the  objector,  and  yet  we  hope.  He  must 
explain  this  hope."  Pippa  Passes  is  the  drama- 
tization of  the  tidal  moment,  and  Pippa  is  the 
little  alchemist  who  transmutes  the  metal  of  the 
moment  into  gold. 

1 1 .  Pippa  is  the  least  complex  and  Becky  Sharp 
the  most  complex  character  that  we  have  to  con- 
sider. Indeed  Thackeray  intended  Vanity  Fair  as 
a  protest  against  the  novels,  and  Becky  Sharp  as 
a  protest  against  the  heroines,  that  could  be  con- 
ventionally classed.  To  know  her  is  not  to  under- 
stand her,  but  it  is  to  understand  phases  of  society 
that   had   never   before   been   so   subtly   probed. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    105 

"Vanity  Fair"  said  Lord  Rosebery  recently,  "  is 
the  most  full  and  various  novel  in  the  English 
language,"  and  Becky  Sharp  gives  it  both  its  ful- 
ness and  its  variety.  You  do  not  know  what  she 
is  going  to  do  next,  and  Thackeray  confessed  that 
he  did  not  know  what  she  had  already  done.  But 
you  do  know  that  she  is  a  touchstone  by  which 
the  other  characters  of  Vanity  Fair  are  tested. 
With  all  her  duplicity  she  is  the  best  mirror  that 
Thackeray  ever  held  up  to  English  society .'^Tf 
the  modern  novel,  as  Walter  Besant  said,  is  "the 
only  way  in  which  people  can  learn  what  other  men 
and  women  are  like/jthe  world  owes  a  debt  to 
Vanity  Fair  and  to  its  unheroic  heroine,  Becky 
Sharp.  The  proportion  and  completeness  of  her 
portrayal  were  a  revelation  in  1848  and  are  a 
revelation  still.  What  I  want, "  wrote  Thackeray 
to  his  mother,  "is  to  make  a  set  of  people  living 
without  God  in  the  world  (only  that  is  a  cant 
phrase),  greedy,  pompous  men,  perfectly  self- 
satisfied  for  the  most  part,  and  at  ease  about 
their  superior  virtue."  Near  the  beginning  of 
the  story  he  writes:  "And  this  I  set  down 
as  a  positive  truth:  ^a  woman  with  fair  oppor- 
tunities, and  without  an  absolute  hump,  may 
marry  whom  she  likes."     On  Becky  Sharp  falls 


106  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

the  responsibility  of  illustrating  this  questionable 
foreword. 

False,  selfish,  cunning,  and  covetous  but  always 
successful,  Becky  Sharp  plays  her  role  consistently 
to  the  end.  "There  are  women,"  says  Trollope, 
"to  whom  nothing  is  nasty,  either  in  person, 
language,  scenes,  actions,  or  principle,  and  Becky 
is  one  of  them;  and  yet  she  is  herself  attractive. 
A  most  wonderful  sketch,  for  the  perpetration  of 
which  all  Thackeray's  power  of  combined  indigna- 
tion and  humour  was  necessary."  But  it  was  not 
indignation  and  humour  that  made  Becky  Sharp. 
It  was  rather  the  revolt  from  the  sentimental  fiction 
of  the  day.  It  was  the  determination  to_rjaintJ]fe 
as  it  occasionally  was  and  is  rather  than  as  it  might 
be  or  ought  to  be.  Thackeray's  sympathy  was  not 
with  but  for  this  unheroic  heroine.  Taine  was  right 
in  calling  him  above  all  a  moralist.  He  does  not 
confuse  good  and  bad  in  man  or  woman.  There 
is  a  large  tolerance  for  all,  and  for  none  more  than 
for  Becky  Sharp.  The  best  explanation  of  our  in- 
terest in  her  is  not  that  given  by  Trollope.  It  is 
given  by  Browning  in  Bishop  BlougratrCs  Apology: 

You  see  lads  walk  the  street 
Sixty  the  minute;  what's  to  note  in  that? 
You  see  one  lad  o'erstride  a  chimney-stack; 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    107 

Him  you  must  watch  —  he's  sure  to  fall,  yet  stands! 

Our  interest's  on  the  dangerous  edge  of  things, 

The  honest  thief,  the  tender  murderer, 

The  superstitious  atheist,  demirep 

That  loves  and  saves  her  soul  in  new  French  books  — 

We  watch  while  these  in  equilibrium  keep 

The  giddy  line  midway:  one  step  aside, 

They're  classed  and  done  with. 

Becky  Sharp  and  all  of  her  kind  keep 

The  giddy  line  midway:  one  step  aside, 
They're  classed  and  done  with. 

12.  Vanity  Fair,  David  Copperfield,  and  Silas 
Marner  are  all  historical  novels  in  the  new  sense 
of  the  term.  They  do  not  introduce  great  histori- 
cal characters,  but  they  are  transcripts  of  English 
life  at  definite  periods  and  in  definite  places. 
The  historians  of  the  future  may  well  turn  to  them 
for  local  colour,  for  accurate  details,  and  for  a 
knowledge  of  how  the  men  and  women  of  the  time 
really  lived.  But  David  Copperfield  has  an  added 
interest:  it  is  in  part  an  autobiography.  In  an 
after-dinner  speech  Dickens  once  made  an  affect- 
ing plea  for  four  kinds  of  children:  "the  dear 
child  you  love,  the  dearer  child  you  have  lost, 
the  child  you  might  have  had,  the  child  you  cer- 
tainly have  been."     David  Copperfield  is  the  story 


io8  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

of  the  child  that  Charles  Dickens  certainly  had 
been.  Thackeray  could  never  be  prevailed  upon 
to  say  which  of  his  own  characters  was  his  favorite, 
but  Dickens  had  his  answer  ready:  "It  will  be 
easily  believed  that  I  am  a  fond  parent  of  every 
child  of  my  fancy,  and  that  no  one  can  ever  love 
that  family  as  dearly  as  I  love  them.  But,  like 
many  fond  parents,  I  have  in  my  heart  of  hearts 
a  favorite  child,  and  his  name  is  David  Copper- 
field."  When  he  was  within  three  pages  of  the 
end,  he  wrote  to  John  Forster,  his  future  biog- 
rapher: "Oh,  my  dear  Forster,  if  I  were  to  say 
half  of  what  Copperfield  makes  me  feel  to-night, 
how  strangely  even  to  you  I  should  be  turned 
inside  out!  I  seem  to  be  sending  some  part  of 
myself  into  the  Shadowy  World. " 

But  David  Copperfield  is  more  than  Charles 
Dickens.  He  is  every  normal  boy  and  youth. 
The  warm  mother-love,  the  quaint  old  servant, 
the  solitude  of  childhood,  the  significance  of 
joyousness  in  child  life,  the  incisiveness  of  youth- 
ful sorrows,  the  susceptibility  to  hero-worship, 
the  readiness  for  impulsive  attachments,-  the 
ambition  to  be  a  man  and  to  do  a  man's  work,  the 
memory  of  the  first  applause  —  these  things 
belong  not  only  to  the  autobiography  of  Dickens 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    109 

but  to  the  biography  of  universal  childhood. 
The  autobiographical  facts  are  only  the  materials 
for  larger  interpretative  treatment.  "It  is  to 
the  wisdom  of  that  running  comment  which 
Dickens  makes  upon  them,"  says  Peter  Bayne, 
"that  they  owe  their  best  value." 

As  an  I-novel  David  Copperfield  has  often  been 
classed  with  Pilgrim's  Progress  and  Robinson 
Crusoe.  But  the  last  two  are  not  novels  proper. 
They  are  stories,  moreover,  of  manhood.  David 
Copperfield  begins:  "Whether  I  shall  turn  out 
to  be  the  hero  of  rny  own  life,  or  whether  that 
station  will  be  held  by  anybody  else,  these  pages 
must  show.  To  begin  my  life  with  the  beginning 
of  my  life,  I  record  that  I  was  born  (as  I  have  been 
informed  and  believe)  on  a  Friday,  at  twelve  o'clock 
at  night.  It  was  remarked  that  the  clock  began 
to  strike  and  I  began  to  cry,  simultaneously." 
It  ends :  "My  lamp  burns  low,  and  I  have  written 
far  into  the  night,  but  the  dear  presence,  without 
which  I  were  nothing,  bears  me  company.  Oh, 
Agnes,  Oh,  my  soul!  so  may  thy  face  be  by  me 
when  I  close  my  life  indeed;  so  may  I,  when 
realities  are  melting  from  me  like  the  shadows 
which  I  now  dismiss,  still  find  thee  near  me, 
pointing  upward!"     David  Copperfield,  in  other 


no  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

words,  is  the  only  I-novel  that  begins  with  infancy, 
carries  you  without  serious  break  to  early  man- 
hood, impresses  you  on  every  page  with  a  sense 
of  unmistakable  reality,  and  makes  you  feel  that 
you  are  reading  your  own  life  in  its  normal  and 
essential  emotions.  It  is  the  great  I-novel  in 
which  "I"  stands  for  the  fiyiiversal  element 
in  every  reader.  "~7 

13.  Some  literary  statistician  has  figured  out 
that  David  Copperfield  contains  340,000  words,  Silas 
Marner  75,000.  A  first  reading  of  the  two  books 
would  leave  the  impression  that  the  difference  in 
length  was  even  greater.  Silas  Marner  is  a  tale 
or  extended  short  story  rather  than  a  novel,  its 
symmetry  and  unity  of  structure  making  it  appear 
even  shorter  than  it  is.  Unity  of  structure,  how- 
ever, and  even  sameness  of  theme,  are  character- 
istic of  all  George  Eliot's  novels.  The  theme  that 
she  prefers  to  treat  has  been  well  phrased  by 
Sidney  Lanier.  It  is  "that  of  a  hungering  life, 
at  first  balked  by  adverse  circumstances,  wasting 
itself  on  something  unworthy  —  often  from  pure 
ignorance  as  to  where  anything  nobler  is  to  be 
found  —  but  after  struggling,  finally  finding  better 
and  larger  life  and  love."  This  outline  fits  per- 
fectly the  story  of  Silas  Marner,  but  George  Eliot 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   in 

has  expressed  her  purpose  in  the  story  still  more 
concisely:  she  intended  it  to  emphasize  "the 
remedial  influences  of  pure,  natural  human  rela- 
tions," and  she  placed  upon  the  title-page  these 
lines  from  Wordsworth : 

A  child,  more  than  all  other  gifts 
That  earth  can  offer  to  declining  man, 
Brings  hope  with  it,  and  forward-looking  thoughts. 

For  fifteen  years  Silas  Marner,  the  weaver  of 
Raveloe,  worshipped  the  gold  coins  that  he  had 
painfully  amassed.  For  fifteen  years  he  had  been 
growing  less  and  less  human  and  more  and  more 
miserly  and  money-mad.  People  meant  nothing 
to  him.  His  all  was  the  gold  heap  in  the  hole 
underneath  the  brick  floor,  by  the  side  of  his 
loom.  Then  came  the  robbery.  "He  put  his 
trembling  hands  to  his  head  and  gave  a  wild 
ringing  screamf"  The  hole  was  empty.  New 
Year's  Eve  came  and  "Turning  toward  the 
hearth,  where  the  two  logs  had  fallen  apart,  and 
sent  forth  only  a  red  uncertain  glimmer,  Silas 
seated  himself  on  his  fireside  chair,  and  was 
stooping  to  push  his  logs  together,  when,  to  his 
blurred  vision,  it  seemed  as  if  there  were  gold  in 
the   floor   in   front  of  the   hearth.      Gold!  —  his 


ii2  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

own  gold  —  brought  back  to  him  as  mysteriously 
as  it  had  been  taken  away!  He  felt  his  heart 
begin  to  beat  violently,  and  for  a  few  moments 
he  was  unable  to  stretch  out  his  hands  and  grasp 
the  restored  treasure.  The  heap  of  gold  seemed  to 
glow  and  get  larger  beneath  his  agitated  gaze. 
He  leaned  forward  at  last,  and  stretched  forth 
his  hand;  but  instead  of  the  hard  coin  with  the 
familiar  resisting  outline,  his  fingers  encountered 
soft  warm  curls.  In  utter  amazement,  Silas  fell 
on  his  knees  and  bent  his  head  low  to  examine  the 
marvel:  it  was  a  sleeping  child  —  a  round,  fair 
thing,  with  soft  yellow  rings  all  over  its  head. " 

Now  begins  the  slow  but  steady  restoration  of 
Silas  to  the  normal  life.  His  spirit,  "dried  up  and 
closely  furled,"  began  to  feel  "the  freshness  of 
the  early  world."  A  little  "golden  head"  had 
taken  the  place  of  gold.  "The  gold  had  kept  his 
thoughts  in  an  ever-repeated  circle,  leading  to 
nothing  beyond  itself;  but  Eppie  was  an  object 
compacted  of  changes  and  hopes  that  forced  his 
thoughts  onward,  and  carried  them  far  away  from 
their  old  eager  pacing  toward  the  same  blank 
limit."  George  Eliot's  final  summary  joins  the 
story  with  those  eternal  processes  of  redemrjtion 
that  pass  daily  and  unheeded  before  us,  but  less 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   113 

unheeded  now  that  Silas  and  Eppie  have  become 
a  part  of  them:  "In  old  days  there  were  angels 
who  came  and  took  men  by  the  hand  and  led 
them  away  from  the  city  of  destruction.  We  see 
no  white-winged  angels  now.  But  yet  men  are 
led  away  from  threatening  destruction:  a  hand  is 
put  into  theirs,  which  leads  them  forth  gently 
toward  a  calm  and  bright  land,  so  that  they  look 
no  more  backward;  and  the  hand  may  be  a  little 
child's." 

14.  Silas  Marner  is  the  story  of  a  man  who 
was  saved  by  substituting  the  humanizing  love  of 
a  little  girl  for  the  dehumanizing  love  of  gold. 
In  much  the  same  way  two  outcasts  of  Parisian 
society,  Fantine_and  Cosette,  help  on  the  reforma-, 
tion  of  Jean  Valjean.  "A  little  child  shall  lead 
them"  might  be  a  subtitle  for  both  books.  In 
both  books,  too,  it  is  the  opportunity  to  minister, 
not  to  be  ministered  to,  that  makes  the  change. 
But  Les  Miserables  is  a  vaster  book  than  Silas 
Marner*  and  Jean  Valjean  a  vaster  character 
than  the  weaver  of  Raveloe.  Never  till  Les 
Miserables  appeared,  in  1862,  had  the  submerged 
classes  found  so  powerful  a  representation  in 
literature,  and  never  had  their  oppressors  been 
so  pilloried.     Their  oppressors,  thinks  Hugo,  are 


ii4  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

not  so  much  men  as  men-administered  institutions. 
It  is  these  that  perpetuate  ignorance  and  misery, 
and  "  So  long  as  ignorance  and  misery  remain  upon 
the  earth,  so  long,"  says  Hugo,  "will  books  of  this 
kind  be  demanded. "  In  another  eloquent  passage 
he  exclaims:  " Destroy  the  cave,  Ignorance,  and 
you  destroy  the  mole,  Crime.  .  .  .  The  sole 
social  evil  is  darkness;  humanity  is  one,  for  all 
men  are  of  the  same  clay,  and  in  this  nether  world 
at  least  there  is  no  difference  in  predestination; 
we  are  the  same  shadow  before,  the  same  flesh 
during,  and  the  same  ashes  afterward.  But 
ignorance,  mixed  with  the  human  paste,  blackens 
it,  and  this  incurable  blackness  enters  man  and 
becomes  Evil  there. " 

Jean  Valjean,  the  hero,  receives  the  maximum 
penalty  for  the  minimum  offence.  He  had 
stolen  a  loaf  of  bread  to  give  his  starving  sister 
and  her  seven  children.  He  received  five  years 
in  the  galleys  for  robbery,  and  fourteen  more  for 
trying  to  escape.  He  comes  out  of  the  galleys  a 
hardened  criminal,  aged  forty-six.  "It  is  sad  to 
say  that  after  trying  society,  which  had  caused, 
his  misfortunes,  he  tried  Providence,  which  had 
made  society,  and  condemned  it  also."  He 
receives  his  first  kindness  from  a  good  Bishop, 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    115 

whom  he  requites  by  stealing  his  silver  plate. 
When  an  officer  hales  him  before  the  Bishop,  the 
Bishop  speaks  first:  "Ah!  there  you  are.  I  am 
glad  to  see  you;  but  I  gave  you  the  candlesticks, 
too,  which  are  also  silver  and  will  bring  you  two 
hundred  francs.  Why  did  you  not  take  them 
away  with  the  rest  of  the  plate?"  When  the 
officer  had  gone,  the  Bishop  turned  again  to  Jean 
Valjean:  "My  brother,  you  no  longer  belong  to 
evil  but  to  good.  I  have  bought  your  soul  of  you. 
I  withdraw  it  from  black  thoughts  and  the  spirit 
of  perdition,  and  give  it  to  God. " 

Jean  Valjean  is  stunned,  but  the  better  nature 
has  been  reached.  Still,  in  a  strange  fit  of  absent- 
mindedness,  he  takes  two  francs  from  a  child  and 
then,  overtaken  by  remorse,  tries  to  find  the  little 
fellow  and  restore  his  money.  Years  afterward, 
when  under  a  different  name  Jean  Valjean  has 
become  rich  and  honoured,  he  hears  that  another 
is  to  be  sent  to  the  galleys  for  his  own  theft  of  the 
two-franc  piece.  A  terrible  mental  struggle 
follows.  This  struggle,  not  the  Battle  of  Water- 
loo, is  the  master  description  in  the  book.  He 
reaches  the  place  of  trial  just  in  time  to  have  an 
innocent  man  acquitted  and  himself  condemned 
to  the   galleys   for  life%     After   rescuing  a   sailor 


n6  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

from  drowning,  Jean  Valjcan  again  escapes,  but  he 
is  a  hunted  man  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  From  his 
hiding  places,  however,  he  is  a  ministering  angel 
to  Cosette.  This  little  outcast  had  been  com- 
mitted to  him  by  her  mother,  Fantine,  into  whose 
life  he  had  brought  the  only  sunlight  that  ever 
penetrated  there.  Only  at  the  last  does  he 
receive  some  measure  of  the  love  that  he  had 
poured  out  to  others.  "I  know  not  what  is  the 
matter  with  me,"  he  said  just  before  death,  "but. 
I  see  light. " 

The  publication  of  Les  Miserables  was  an  event 
in  the  history  of  social  reform.  It  is  an  unequalled 
and  unanswered  indictment  of  the  therT~existing 
social  order.  It  is  not  constructive,  except  in 
that  high  sense  in  which  all  works  are  constructive 
that  discipline  the  faculties  of  moral  indignation 
and  purify  and  enlarge  the  sympathies.  In  the 
outcasts  of  earth,  in  the  disinherited  and  con- 
demned, in  the  lowest  dregs  of  society,  men  have 
since  learned  to  see  possible  Jean  Valjeans.  "Is 
there  not,"  asks  the  author,  "in  every  human  soul, 
was  there  not  in  that  of  Jean  Valjean  especially, 
a  primary  spark,  a  divine  element,  incorruptible 
in  this  world,  and  immortal  for  the  other,  which 
good  can  develop,  illumine,  and  cause  to  gleam 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   117 

splendidly,  and  which  evil  can  never  entirely 
extinguish?"  To  ask  this  question  is  not  to 
answer  it,  but,  after  Les  Miserables,  it  is  to  see  new 
possibilities  in  human  nature,  to  hold  all  law  and 
custom  to  a  juster  account^  and  to  think  thoughts 
that  in  themselves  are  not  far  from  deeds. 

15.  Two  qualities  stand  out  supreme  in  Hugo's 
masterpiece:  flaming  indignation  and  tender  sym- 
pathy. In  Uncle  Remus:  His  Songs  and  his  Sayings, 
there  is  only  sympathy,  but  it  is  a  sympathy  so 
sure  in  its  insight,  so  wide  in  its  range,  so  wise  in 
its  expression,  that  it  has  enabled  the  author  to 
typify  a  race,  and  thus  to  perpetuate  a  civil- 
ization. What  Cooper  did  for  the  Indian,  Joel 
Chandler  Harris  has  done  for  the  negro.  Just  as 
Chingachgook  is  the  last  of  the  Mohicans,  so 
Uncle  Remus  is  the  last  of  the  old-time  negroes. 
In  literature  he  is  also  the  first*  These  stories, 
moreover,  reproduce  a  dialect  so  accurately  that 
it  may  now  be  studied  like  any  other  form  of 
primitive  English.  They  brought  also  the  folk- 
tales of  a  race  into  literature,  and  thus  laid  the 
foundation  for  the  scientific  study  of  negro  folk- 
lore. Uncle  Remus  himself,  however,  is  more 
interesting  than  his  stories. 

Twenty-eight  years  before  the  appearance  of 


7R£  DO  FOR  ML 

.     ■ 

a  negro.     He  is  the 

:'jod  man  subjected  to  inhnman  treat- 

:.::.     :'-;-;  :v.  v     ::     _.-:.-.:--._-       ?'»;:    .:     -;.~ 

negro  of  the  oomic  minstrel  show,  the  negro  of 

Loflins   Foster,   a   real   interpretation. 

deserved]}-   popular   as    Foster's    songs    are, 

-  :~  : 
nannting  melody  —  is  a  vague  sentimentality. 
i_:  '.:■:  :.i-'.".-:  -  ."  -  :  :.::  \t:.\~.t:.'^.. 
is  religious,  musical,  humorous,  loyal, 
-: ~ :::::. =.'..  -__  =  :-*_  -  :.-•.;:.  ioiii":!-:.  !~  ;  :;\  'it:. *„ 
:::'.:~r.!:.  :\...  :•  :^ —  ^~:  *.  tvt--.:..:.? 
fact  except  sentimental.  Harris's  portrayal, 
:;•:-■:::-•:.  :'.i~L~i  i  -  i.v:r.  n::  .:  -.-;-  i  :  -- 
-.;-_!-.  ;r.  K  .--  i-.z  .  i  -11;  :r.  *.;.-;  ::- 
acter  of  an  individual-  Uncle  Renins  has  also  a 
ft*rt:  :!:-r.!f.:ir.:t.  i  :  :rr..f. :;-  ::  :!-.*:  -■;.;  i>;;. -* 
clearer  the  more  the  character  is  studied:  in  the 
knowledge  of  negro  life,  and  in  the  sympathy  with 
negro  character  shown  in  the  portrayal  of  Lode 
Remus,  there  is  suggested  a  better  method  for  the 
_*.:-.'  -.:'  *.;.•:  "--.:  --  :  r .  z-:'z>.~  -.:.  =  -  -_  =  -. 
be  found  in  all  the  political  platforms  and  merely 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   119 

legal  enactments  that  American  statesmanship 
has  yet  devised.  Jean  Yaljean  represents  a  class, 
Uncle  Remus  a  race.  The  creators  of  both  teach 
that  the  understanding  that  comes  through 
sympathy  must  precede  the  knowledge  that  seeks 
its  ends  through  legislation. 

Let  us  attempt  now  to  relate  these  characters 
as  a  whole  to  the  problem  of  learning  "what  other 
men  and  women  are  like. "  [Tt  is  at  least  evident 
that  from  Homer  to  the  present  time  interest  in 
other  men  and  women  has  been  an  absorbing 
interest/^  Is  it  not  evident  also  that  a  study  of 
human  nature  as  the  masters  have  portrayed  it  is 
a  means  of  widening  and  deepening  our  knowledge 
of  human  nature?     Let  us  see. 

One  reason,,  wh^Fuman  nature  is  a  sealed  book 
to  so  man>  is  that  their  range  of  character-interests 
is  too  limited.  You  cannot  measure  a  man's  knowl- 
edge of  animals  by  the  number  of  animals  that 
he  has  seen,  but  by  the  number  that  he  has  seen 
and  is  interested  in.  We  learn  not  by  contact, 
but  by  contact  plus  interest.  A  man  may  spend 
his  life  among  trees  and  not  know  the  names  or 
natures  of  a  half-dozen  of  them.  But  if  you  can 
increase  his   range  of  tree-interests  you   increase 


120  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

permanently  his  tree-knowledge,  or  at  least  put 
him  in  the  way  of  increasing  it  for  himself.  It  is 
so  with  our  knowledge  of  our  fellow-men.  We 
shut  ourselves  up  to  a  few  types  and  are  blind  to 
the  others,  or  measure  the  others  solely  by  these 
types.  We  have  never  realized  the  greatness, 
the  variety,  or  the  possibilities  of  human  nature. 
Our  lens  is  too  contracted.  What  is  needed  is  to 
multiply  our  human-nature  interests.  Will  not 
great  fiction  do  this  for  us?  Is  it  possible  to  look 
at  human  nature  through  the  eyes  of  the  great 
character-creators  and  then  see  no  more  in  the 
life  about  us  than  we  saw  before? 

(But  great  fiction  not  only  broadens  our  range 
of  character-interests,  it  directs  our  attention  to 
the  essentials  of  character^  As  complex  as  human 
nature  is,  the  central  factors  are  not  many.  Love, 
growth,  honour,  sympathy,  idealism,  faith,  forti- 
tude, truth,  tolerance,  cooperation  —  these  are  the 
fundamentals,  and  it  is  on  these  or  their  opposites 
that  the  masters  put  the  stress.  Sometimes  they 
take  only  one  great  trait  and  build  the  char- 
acter on_or  around  this,  though  usually  they  take 
more.  But  whether  one  or  more,  it  is  the  essen- 
tials with  which  they  deal.  Men  do  not  differ 
from    one    another    so    much    in    the    possession 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   121 

of  different  qualities  as  in  the  relative  accent  that 
they  put  upon  the  qualities  that  they  have  in 
common.  Goethe  said  that  he  never  read  of  a 
criminal  without  feeling  that  he  might  have  been 
that  criminal.  The  same  latencies  were  there,  but 
in  Goethe  these  qualities  were  differently  arranged 
and  differently  stressed.  Individuality  is  in  arrent) 
notmj^idlmg;  and  the  study  of  great  fiction  is  the 
study  not  of  character-spelling  but  of  character- 
accent.  Our  fifteen  characters  are  as  different' 
as  fifteen  characters  could  well  be,  but  each  one 
of  them  is  a  study  in  essentials.  A  few  qualities 
give  the  key,  and  the  result  is  a  revelation.  To 
see  how  needful  this  lesson  of  the  essentials  is, 
ask  the  average  man  to  analyze  and  interpret 
the  character  of  some  one  whom  you  both  know. 
See  if  he  does  not  talk  all  around  the  character, 
giving  age,  dress,  colour  of  hair  and  eyes,  and  ending 
with  some  vague  generality  as  impersonal  as  air. 
rBut  great  fiction  not  only  presents  character 
in  its  variety  and  vitality,  but  presents  it  more 
completely  than  we  can  see  it  in  the  men  and 
women  about  us/)  Compare  a  biography  with 
a  good  novel  of  equal  size.  The  biographer 
states  facts  and  dates,  tells  the  things  that  were 
known  about  the  man,  arranges  them  in  chrono- 


122  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

logical  order,  perhaps  makes  wise  comments  upon 
them.  But  he  is  working  from  the  outside. 
The  central  springs  of  motive  and  action  are 
never  near  the  surface.  The  man's  life,  moreover, 
was  not  planned  to  lay  bare  his  inmost  soul,  and 
the  biography  follows  far  behind  the  life.  But  in 
the  case  of  fictive  characters  the  biography  is  the 
life.  The  story  is  all.  The  character  may  have 
been  sketched  in  part  from  one  or  more  characters 
in  real  life,  but  when  it  is  put  upon  the  printed  page, 
it  must  bear  its  credentials  with  it.  It  must  be  a 
creation  that  validates  itself,  an  interpretation  that 
interprets  itself.  Achievements  in  character- 
creation  may  be  complex,  may  be  hard  to  decipher, 
but  there  is  no  place  for  fragmentariness.  There 
must  be  oneness  and  wholeness  or  there  is  no  life. 
With  all  the  obscurity  that  Thackeray  loved  to 
throw  about  Becky  Sharp,  we  know  her  better  than 
we  know  any  historical  character  of  her  time  and 
better  than  her  own  lovers  knew  her.  She  cannot 
lie  to  us.  We  know  her  unspoken  thoughts. 
We  know  not  only  what  others  said  of  her  to  her 
back,  but  what  they  thought  of  her  in  secret. 
We  can,  in  fact,  never  know  men  and  women  in 
real  life  as  we  know  them  in  fiction,  because 
in  real  life  their  Creator  does  not  visibly  direct 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   123 

their  actions  toward  a  preordained  end  or  by  a 
preordained  chart.  But  to  know  even  a  few  of 
the  great  characters  of  fiction  gives  a  direction 
and  wholeness  to  our  observation  of  real  life  that 
we  can  get  nowhere  else.  There  are  no  perfect 
circles  in  nature;  but  to  see  a  perfect  circle, 
though  a  made  one,  is  necessary  to  the  accu- 
rate observation  of  an  imperfect  one.  We  must 
presuppose  completeness  before  we  can  measure 
incompleteness. 

Is  it  necessary  now  to  answer  the  old  question: 
Why  study  human  nature  in  books  when  you  can 
study  it  in  the  flesh?  Why  waste  time  on  paper 
folks  when  there  are  real  folks  all  about  you? 
This  chapter  has  been  written  to  no  purpose  if 
this  question  has  not  been  already  answered. 
The  study  of  human  nature  in  books  is  solely  to 
the  end  that  it  may  be  better  studied  in  life.  \ 
A  mere  book-knowledge  of  men  and  women  will 
avail  little  —  may  be  permanently  narrowing  — 
unless  it  is  used  as  a  means  of  seeing  more  in  and 
more  deeply  into  the  life  about  us  and  within  us. 
Great  fiction  is  a  laboratory  course  in  human 
nature..  It  is  to  real  life  what  botany  is  to  flowers, 
what  astronomy  is  to  stars,  what  the  world  of  the 
microscope  and  telescope  is  to  the  world  of  the 


i24  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

naked  eye.     It  is  not  a  substitute  for  real  life,  but 
an  introduction  to  real  life. 

We  hear  much  to-day  about  "a  shrewd  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature."  The  phrase  means, 
when  men  brag  about  it,  not  a  knowledge  of 
human  nature  at  all,  but  only  a  "shrewd"  way 
of  dealing  writh  human  nature.  Literature  will 
not  give  this,  but  it  will  give  a  knowledge  of 
human  nature  that  partakes  more  of  wisdom  than 
of  shrewdness.  It  will  give  you  freedom  and 
enrichment.  You  will  laugh  with  the  great 
laughers,  love  with  the  great  lovers,  dream  with 
the  great  dreamers,  see  with  the  great  seers,  and 
do  with  the  great  doers. 


CHAPTER  IV 

It  Can  Restore  the  Past  to   You 


WHEN  literature  holds  before  us  the  vision 
of  the  ideal,  it  points  us  to  the  future; 
when  it  gives  us  a  more  sympathetic  in- 
sight into  the  men  and  women  with  whom  our 
lot  is  cast,  it  points  us  to  the  present;  when  it 
restores  to  us  the  men  and  events  long  since 
vanished,  it  points  us  to  the  past.  Literature, 
then,  anticipates  the  future,  interprets  the  present, 
and  recalls  the  past.  It  has  three  tenses,  because 
human  nature  has  three  tenses.  Each  tense  is 
an  outlet. 

No  power  of  the  poet  gives  me  a  greater  feeling 
of  awe  than  that  by  which  he  says  to  oblivion: 
"Hitherto  shalt  thou  come,  but  no  further:  and 
here  shall  thy  proud  waves  be  stayed."  The 
enemies  that  man  has  fought  most  persistently 
from  the  beginning  are  death  and  oblivion,  He 
fights  death  with  science;  he  fights  oblivion,  most 
successfully,  with  literature.     The  historian  may 

125 


i26  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

galvanize  the  past,  but  the  poet  vitalizes  it.  The 
great  deeds  of  the  heroic  dead  are  preserved  in 
annals  and  chronicles,  but  they  live  in  song  and 
story.  Enshrine  history  in  literature  and  you 
give  it  both  currency  and  permanency.  We  often 
speak  of  "the  irrevocable  past,"  but  to  literature 
there  is  no  irrevocable  past.  Literature  can  not 
only  recall  the  past,  but  can  make  of  it  an  ever- 
living  present. 

On  September  15,  1833,  there  died  in  Vienna, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  one  of  the  most  promis- 
ing young  Englishmen  of  his  century.  That,  at 
least,  was  the  opinion  of  Tennyson,  of  Gladstone, 
of  Lord  Houghton,  of  Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle, 
of  every  one  in  fact  who  knew  him  and  wrote  of 
him.  His  name  was  Arthur  Henry  Hallam.  His 
father,  Henry  Hallam,  a  distinguished  historian, 
erected  a  handsome  tablet  to  his  son,  had  a  marble 
bust  of  him  made,  and  published  at  once  his 
Remains  in  Prose  and  Verse  with  an  affectionate 
memoir.  The  latter  is  peculiarly  pathetic.  There 
runs  through  it  the  thought  that  his  son  was  cut 
down  before  he  had  a  chance  to  make  a  name  for 
himself,  but  that  he  would  have  made  a  name  for 
himself,  a  great  name,  with  the  coming  years. 
This  thought  is  expressed  on  the  marble  tablet: 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    127 

"And  now  in  this  obscure  and  solitary  Church 
repose  the  mortal  remains  of 
one  too  early  lost  for  public  fame 
but  already  conspicuous  among  his  contemporaries 
for  the  brightness  of  his  genius, 
the  depth  of  his  understanding, 
the  nobleness  of  his  disposition, 
the  fervour  of  his  piety 
and  the  purity  of  his  life." 

Note  the  words,  "too  early  lost  for  public 
fame. "  It  seemed  so,  though  wealth  and  affection 
had  done  all  they  could  do.  Literature,  however, 
had  not  spoken.  But  in  the  year  1850,  a  great 
poet,  Alfred  Tennyson,  published  a  great  poem, 
In  Memoriam,  the  theme  of  which  is  Tennyson's 
friendship  for  Hallam.  And  to-day  Arthur  Henry 
Hallam  is  known  wherever  English  literature  is 
studied.  His  "public  fame"  already  far  surpasses 
that  of  his  father,  though  the  historian  lived  to 
the  age  of  eighty-two  and  was  honoured  by  a 
statue  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  The  readers  who 
know  of  the  historian  because  he  was  the  father 
of  his  son  are  already  more  in  number  than  those 
who  know  of  Arthur  Henry  Hallam  merely  be- 
cause he  was  the  son  of  his  father.  And  this 
number  will  increase,  for  the  name  of  Arthur 
Henry    Hallam    is   linked    forever   with    a  poem 


128  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

that  is  one  of  the  world's  most  beautiful  trib- 
utes to  friendship.  It  is  more  than  this.  "In 
Memoriam,"  said  Tennyson,  "is  rather  the  cry 
of  the  whole  human  race  than  mine.  In 
the  poem  altogether  private  grief  swells  out 
into  thought  of,  and  hope  for,  the  whole  world. 
It  begins  with  a  funeral  and  ends  with  a 
marriage  —  a  sort  of  Divine  Comedy,  cheerful  at 
the  close."  In  Memoriam  is  a  ladder  reaching 
from  abject  despair  to  triumphant  hope,  and 
the  spirit  of  Hallam,  like  Beatrice  of  old,  is 
our  guide  and  comrade  on  its  ascending 
rounds. 

Could  a  painting,  a  monument,  a  statue,  a 
memorial  building  have  rescued  Hallam  as  suc- 
cessfully from  oblivion  as  this  poem  has  done? 
Could  they  have  given  him  so  secure  a  position 
in  the  thoughts  and  affections  of  those  who  never 
saw  him?  Could  they  have  reached  or  helped 
as  many  people?  Great  memorials  have  to  be 
visited,  they  will  not  come  to  you  as  a  poem  does. 
You  may  see  pictures  of  them,  but  the  picture  is  a 
mere  copy,  and  a  copy  of  a  work  of  art  is  a  poor 
thing  except  a  copy  of  a  great  writing.  The  copy  of 
this  is  as  good  as  the  original  —  contains,  in  fact,  all 
of  the  original  that  was  meant  to  be  seen.     Take 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    129 

the  case  of  Helen  Fourment.  She  was  the  second 
wife  of  the  great  portrait  painter,  Rubens.  He 
painted  her  portrait  so  frequently  that  a  recent 
biographer  says:  "We  know  her  charms  as  we 
know  the  charms  of  no  other  woman  that  ever  lived 
in  all  the  eons  of  time."  It  is  not  a  question  here 
of  copies,  for  these  portraits  of  Helen  Fourment 
are  all  originals.  But  which  has  the  more  success- 
fully defied  time,  the  poet  or  the  painter?  Who  is 
the  more  truly  alive,  Arthur  Hallam  or  Helen 
Fourment? 

Let  us  take  another  character,  as  different  from 
Arthur  Henry  Hallam  as  could  well  be  imagined. 
Isaac  Newton  Giffen  was  the  son  of  a  blacksmith 
in  the  mountains  of  east  Tennessee.  He  was  a 
lean,  homely,  freckle-faced  little  fellow  who  could 
neither  read  nor  write.  In  one  of  the  battles  of 
the  Civil  War  —  for  he  was  a  soldier  —  young 
GifFen  was  desperately  wounded  but  was  tenderly 
nursed  by  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Francis  O.  Ticknor,  of 
Torch  Hill,  Georgia.  "His  part  in  eighteen  bat- 
tles," says  Doctor  Ticknor's  granddaughter,  "and 
freedom  from  injury  except  in  the  last,  the  story 
of  his  march,  wounded  and  ill,  how  he  and  others 
would  lie  down  in  the  road  to  drink  the  water 
from  mud-puddles,  and  other  events  of  his  war 


i3o  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

career,  were  sources  of  untiring  entertainment  to 
the  children,  and  by  amusing  them  he  was  a  great 
help  to  Mrs.  Ticknor.  Giffen  came  to  Torch  Hill 
in  September,  1863,  and  left  in  March,  1864. 
On  the  day  of  his  departure  he  and  Douglas 
Ticknor  started  from  Torch  Hill  to  Columbus, 
riding  an  old  gray  army  horse;  at  Bull  Creek  the 
water  was  unusually  high  and  the  horse  lost  the 
road,  fell  into  a  washout,  and  both  boys  were 
thrown.  Douglas  and  the  horse  came  ashore  on 
the  Torch  Hill  side,  while  the  current  carried 
Giffen  across  the  creek.  From  there  he  waved 
his  last  good-bye,  and  climbed  wet  and  muddy 
into  the  wagon  of  a  negro  going  to  town.  Nothing 
further  was  ever  heard  of  him,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  he  met  death  in  some  immediate 
encounter. "  Nothing  here  for  painter  or  sculptor. 
But  Doctor  Ticknor  was  a  poet,  and  in  1867  these 
lines  appeared: 

LITTLE  GIFFEN 

Out  of  the  focal  and  foremost  fire, 
Out  of  the  hospital  walls  as  dire, 
Smitten  of  grape-shot  and  gangrene, 
(Eighteenth  battle,  and  he  sixteen!) 
Spectre!  such  as  you  seldom  see, 
Little  Giffen,  of  Tennessee! 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    131 

"Take  him  and  welcome!"  the  surgeon  said: 
"Little  the  doctor  can  help  the  dead!" 

So  we  took  him,  and  brought  him  where 

The  balm  was  sweet  in  the  summer  air; 

And  we  laid  him  down  on  a  wholesome  bed  — 

Utter  Lazarus,  heel  to  head! 

And  we  watched  the  war  with  abated  breath, 
Skeleton  boy  against  skeleton  death. 
Months  of  torture,  how  many  such? 
Weary  weeks  of  the  stick  and  crutch; 
And  still  a  glint  of  the  steel-blue  eye 
Told  of  a  spirit  that  wouldn't  die. 

And  didn't.     Nay,  more!  in  death's  despite 

The  crippled  skeleton  learned  to  write. 
"Dear  Mother,"  at  first,  of  course;  and  then 
"Dear  Captain,"  inquiring  about  the  men. 

Captain's  answer:  "Of  eighty  and  five, 

Giffen  and  I  are  left  alive." 

Word  of  gloom  from  the  war,  one  day; 
Johnston  pressed  at  the  front,  they  say. 
Little  Giffen  was  up  and  away; 
A  tear  —  his  first  —  as  he  bade  good-bye, 
Dimmed  the  glint  of  his  steel-blue  eye. 
"I'll  write,  if  spared!"     There  was  news  of  the  fight; 
But  none  of  Giffen.     He  did  not  write. 

I  sometimes  fancy  that  were  I  king 

Of  the  princely  knights  of  the  Golden  Ring,* 


*Why  is  this  reference  to  King  Arthur  and  his  Knights  of  the  Round 
Table  peculiarly  appropriate  in  the  case  of  Little  Giffen?     See  page  80. 


i32   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

With  the  song  of  the  minstrel  in  mine  ear, 
And  the  tender  legend  that  trembles  here, 
I'd  give  the  best  on  his  bended  knee, 
The  whitest  soul  of  my  chivalry, 
For  Little  Giffen,  of  Tennessee. 


Over  these  lines,  as  over  a  bridge  stretching 
from  death  to  life,  Little  Giffen  has  come  back 
to  dwell  among  men.  Has  he  not  lived  a  larger 
life  since  1867  than  he  lived  before?  Thousands 
knOw  him  now  where  one  knew  him  before.  He 
has  not  lost  his  individuality,  but  he  has  become 
a  symbol,  not  of  partisanship  but  of  loyalty  — 
fearless,  unswerving,  death-defying  loyalty. 

Literature  is  full  of  triumphs  of  this  sort. 
Read  Milton's  Lycidas,  William  Douglas's  Annie 
Laurie,  Burns's  To  Mary  in  Heaven,  Charles 
Lamb's  Hester,  Wordsworth's  Lucy  Gray,  Walter 
Savage  Landor's  Rose  Aylmer,  John  Hay's  Jim 
Bludso  of  the  Prairie  Belle.  Each  of  these  poems, 
brief  as  it  is,  has  rescued  a  name  from  oblivion  by 
attaching  it  to  a  thought  or  mood  or  emotion 
common  to  us  all.  None  of  the  persons  thus 
celebrated  would  have  been  mentioned  by  the 
historian,  because,  though  real,  they  were,  not 
historical.  They  affected  in  no  way  the  course 
of  history  in  their  respective  countries  or  centuries, 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    133 

and  thus  did  not  come  within  the  province  of  the 
historian.  In  most  cases,  however,  the  characters 
that  literature  revitalizes  are  those  that  have  an 
historical  interest.  We  already  know  something 
of  them,  but  not  enough  to  bring  them  vividly 
before  us.  We  know  them  by  name  perhaps  but 
not  by  heart.  In  such  cases  the  poet  and  the 
historical  novelist  supplement  the  work  of  the 
historian.  They  restore  to  us,  however,  not  only 
men  and  women  but  historical  events,  historical 
periods,  and  even  whole  races  that  have  vanished 
or  are  vanishing. 

Few  persons  realize  how  much  of  our  knowledge 
of  the  past  is  due  to  literature  rather  than  to 
history  proper.  Boys  thrill  to-day  over  a  battle 
fought  between  the  French  and  the  Austrians  in  a 
far-off  village  in  Bavaria  not  because  the  histori- 
ans have  rescued  it,  but  because  Thomas  Campbell 
wrote  The  Battle  of  Hohenlinden.  Over  a  chasm 
of  more  than  eighteen  centuries  we  applaud  the 
heroism  of  a  heathen  queen  not  because  annals 
and  chronicles  have  brought  her  to  us,  but  because 
Cowper  made  an  appeal  for  her  in  his  Boadicea. 
We  know  and  love  Scotch  history  not  because  we 
have  gone  to  Burton's  or  Mackintosh's  learned 
volumes,  but  because  the  history  of  Scotland  has 


134  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

come  to  us  in  the  prose  and  poetry  of  Walter 
Scott  and  Robert  Burns.  Men  talk  familiarly 
to-day  of  D'Artagnan,  Louis  XIII,  Richelieu, 
Anne  of  Austria,  and  Mazarin,  not  because  they 
have  studied  French  history,  but  because  in  The 
Three  Musketeers,  Twenty  Years  After,  and  The 
Vicomte  de  Bragelonne  Alexander  Dumas  has  made 
this  period  of  French  history  more  familiar  than 
any  other  unless  it  be  the  period  of  the  French 
Revolution.  If  the  French  Revolution  is  better 
known  it  is  because  Dumas  and  Victor  Hugo  and 
a  host  of  others  have  found  their  material  in  it. 

Who  that  has  once  read  it  can  ever  forget  the 
passage  in  Les  Miser ables  beginning,  "One  half 
light,  one  half  shade,  Napoleon  felt  himself 
protected  in  good  and  tolerated  in  evil"?  Or 
this  comment  on  the  Battle  of  Waterloo?  "Was 
it  possible  for  Napoleon  to  win  the  battle?  We 
answer  in  the  negative.  Why?  On  account  of 
Wellington,  on  account  of  Bliicher?  No;  on  ac- 
count of  God.  Bonaparte,  victor  at  Waterloo,  did 
not  harmonize  with  the  law  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Another  series  of  facts  was  preparing,  in 
which  Napoleon  had  no  longer  a  place:  the  iH-will 
of  events  had  been  displayed  long  previously. 
It  was  time  for  this  vast  man  to  fall;  his  excessive 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    135 

weight  in  human  destiny  disturbed  the  balance. 
This  individual  alone  was  of  more  account  than  the 
universal  group:  such  plethoras  of  human  vitality 
concentrated  in  a  single  head  —  the  world,  mount- 
ing to  one  man's  brain  —  would  be  mortal  to 
civilization  if  they  endured.  The  moment  had 
arrived  for  the  incorruptible  supreme  equity  to 
reflect,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  principles  and 
elements  on  which  the  regular  gravitations  of 
the  moral  order  as  of  the  material  order  de- 
pend, complained.  Streaming  blood,  overcrowded 
graveyards,  mothers  in  tears,  are  formidable 
pleaders.  When  the  earth  is  suffering  from  an 
excessive  burden,  there  are  mysterious  groans 
from  the  shadow,  which  the  abyss  hears.  Napo- 
leon had  been  denounced  in  infinitude,  and  his 
fall  was  decided.  Waterloo  is  not  a  battle,  but  a 
transformation  of  the  universe. " 

The  Duke  of  Marlborough  spoke  for  more  than 
himselTwhen  he  said:  "All  the  English  history 
that  I  know,  I  learned  from  Shakespeare." 
James  Russell  Lowell  expressed  more  than  his 
own  opinion  when  he  pronounced  Hawthorne's 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables  "the  most  valuable  con- 
tribution to  New  England  history  that  has  yet 
been  made."     Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  did  more 


i3 6  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

in  one  poem  to  make  the  Concord  Fight  known  at 
home  and  abroad  than  any  historian  had  done. 
Nothing  better  was  ever  said  or  sung  about  the 
Revolutionary  War  than  the  first  stanza  of  the 
Concord  Hymn,  sung  at  the  completion  of  the 
Battle  Monument  on  April  19,  1836: 

By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 
Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 

Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 

The  foe  long  since  in  silence  slept; 

Alike  the  conqueror  silent  sleeps; 
And  Time  the  ruined  bridge  has  swept 

Down  the  dark  stream  which  seaward  creeps. 

On  this  green  bank,  by  this  soft  stream, 

We  set  to-day  a  votive  stone; 
That  memory  may  their  deed  redeem, 

When,  like  our  sires,  our  sons  are  gone. 

Spirit,  that  made  those  heroes  dare 
To  die,  and  leave  their  children  free, 

Bid  Time  and  Nature  gently  spare 
The  shaft  we  raise  to  them  and  thee. 

We  have  always  doubted,  however,  whether  the 
shot  was  really  "heard  round  the  world"  till 
Emerson  wrote  his  poem.*     The  carrying  power 

*"Tous  at  Oxford  Emerson  was  but  a  voice  speaking  from  three  thousand 
miles  away.  But  so  well  he  spoke  that  from  that  time  forth  Boston  Bay 
and  Concord  were  names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  sentiment  akin  to  that 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    137 

of  a  noble  deed  is  to  be  measured  not  solely  by  the 
nobleness  of  the  deed,  but  by  the  nobleness  of  the 
deed  plus  the  nobleness  of  the  form  in  which  the 
deed  is  expressed.  Wordsworth  recalls  a  great 
truth  when  he  asks: 

And  what  for  this  frail  world  were  all 

That  mortals  do  or  suffer, 
Did  no  responsive  harp,  no  pen, 

Memorial  tribute  offer? 

Those  who  heard  the  Concord  Hymn  sung 
must  have  felt  that  the  deed  had  never  before 
been  so  worthily  expressed,  for  the  first  stanza 
was  forthwith  engraved  on  the  very  monument  at 
whose  completion  the  hymn  was  sung. 

But  Longfellow  outranks  them  all  in  restoring 
our  American  past  to  us.  Just  when  the  critics 
had  made  up  their  minds  that  the  day  of  the  long 
poem  was  over,  Longfellow  wrote  Evangeline,  The 
Song  of  Hiawatha,  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish, 
and  followed  them  with  Paul  Revere' s  Ride. 
These  poems  alone  prove  his  right  to  be  called  our 
best  historian  in  verse.  He  succeeded  in  making 
not    only    characters    but    events,    periods,    and 

which  invests  for  me  the  names  of  Oxford  and  Weimar;  and  snatches  of 
Emerson's  strain  fixed  themselves  in  my  mind  as  imperishably  as  any  of  the 
eloquent  words  which  I  have  been  just  now  quoting."  —  Matthew  Arnold, 
Discourses  in  America. 


138  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

peoples  live  again.  There  are  Acadian  children 
in  Louisiana,  descendants  of  the  people  about 
whom  Longfellow  wrote,  who  know  Evangeline  by 
heart  before  they  reach  their  teens.  The  poem 
is  to  the  Acadians  what  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  were 
to  the  ancient  Greeks.  Its_interest,  however,  is 
confined  to  no  state  or  country.  It  was  the  first 
successful  long  poem  in  our  literature  that  dealt 
with  an  event  in  our  own  history.  "Eureka!" 
cried  Whittier  when  he  first  read  it.  "Here, 
then,  we  have  it  at  last  —  an  American  poem, 
with  the  lack  of  which  British  reviewers  have  so 
long  reproached  us."  Thirty  years  after  its  ap- 
pearance in  1847  it  had  been  translated  into  Ger- 
man, Dutch,  Swedish,  Danish,  French,  Italian, 
Portuguese,  Spanish,  Polish,  and  Bohemian. 

Hiawatha  was  even  more  popular  at  home  and 
abroad.  The  best  comment  on  it  was  made  by 
two  Ojibway  chiefs  who  in  the  year  1900  invited 
Longfellow's  family  to  witness  an  Indian  repro- 
duction of  Hiawatha  on  a  rocky  little  island  in 
Lake  Huron:  "We  loved  your  father.  The 
memory  of  our  people  will  never  die  as  long  as 
your  father's  song  lives,  and  that  will  live  forever." 
Of  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  a  description 
of  the   early   days   of  the   Plymouth   Colony   in 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    139 

Massachusetts,  ten  thousand  copies  were  sold  in 
London  on  the  first  day  of  publication.  The 
poem  became  at  once  an  American  classic,  but,  as 
its  narrative  is  confined  to  New  England,  it  has 
not  carried  our  history  into  as  many  foreign  lands 
as  did  Evangeline  and  Hiawatha. 

Paul  Revere' ' s  Ride  leaped  at  once  to  a  popularity 
that  is  still  unequalled  by  any  other  narrative 
poem  of  the  Revolutionary  War.  It  was  written 
in  i860,  and  the  last  six  lines,  prophesying  the 
patriotic  service  of  Paul  Revere  "through  all  our 
history,  to  the  last,"  are  true  not  only  because  of 
what  Paul  Revere  did  but  because  this  very  poem 
was  written: 

So  through  the  night  rode  Paul  Revere; 

And  so  through  the  night  went  his  cry  of  alarm 

To  every  Middlesex  village  and  farm,  — 

A  cry  of  defiance  and  not  of  fear, 

A  voice  in  the  darkness,  a  knock  at  the  door, 

And  a  word  that  shall  echo  forevermore! 

For,  borne  on  the  night-wind  of  the  Past, 

Through  all  our  history,  to  the  last, 

In  the  hour  of  darkness  and  peril  and  need, 

The  people  will  waken  and  listen  to  hear 

The  hurrying  hoof-beats  of  that  steed, 

And  the  midnight  message  of  Paul  Revere. 

Paul  Revere  has  ridden  better  since  i860  than 
he  ever  rode  before. 


i4o  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

But  the  two  great  masters  to  whom  the  civil- 
ized world  is  most  indebted  for  its  knowledge  of 
the  past  are  Shakespeare  and  Scott.  Blot  these 
men  out  and  think  how  much  of  our  interest  in 
the  past  would  go  with  them.  Do  the  words 
Caesar,  Brutus,  Antony,  Cleopatra,  Coriolanus, 
Troilus,  Cressida  recall  a  definite  character  to 
you?  If  so,  unless  you  are  a  special  student  of 
ancient  history,  the  probabilities  are  that  you  got 
your  knowledge  from  Shakespeare.  You  may 
not  have  read  all  or  any  of  the  plays  in  which 
these  names  occur;  you  may  have  received  your 
information  from  text-books  of  history,  from  biog- 
raphy, from  general  reading,  or  from  a  sort  of 
infiltration  that  you  can  hardly  describe.  In  any 
case,  the  original  source  of  your  idea  of  these 
characters  was  almost  certainly  William  Shake- 
speare. It  was  he  that  lifted  them  out  of  the  dead 
past  and  set  them  in  the  living  present.  The 
historian  or  biographer  whom  you  have  read  may 
not  have  written  with  Shakespeare  before  him, 
but  it  would  have  taken  a  tremendous  effort  on 
his  part  to  free  himself  from  Shakespeare's  influ- 
ence. Thus  if  you  have  never  read  a  line  of 
Shakespeare  —  and  the  same  is  true  of  Scott  — 
you  nevertheless  look  at  the  past  partly  through 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   141 

his  eyes  because  you  share  in  the  historical  thought 
of  your  age  and  country,  and  the  historical 
thought  of  your  age  and  country  finds  one  of  its 
central  sources  in  the  work  of  Shakespeare. 

Think,  too,  how  much  history  clusters  about 
these  names  for  you.  When  you  recall  the  names 
you  recall  deeds,  scenes,  centuries,  countries, 
movements,  passions  that  you  can  never  separate 
from  the  names.  When  you  think  of  Mark  An- 
tony, for  example,  you  think  of  a  great  oration, 
the  greatest  ever  written.  Caesar's  dead  body 
is  before  you  and  a  multitude  of  sullen  or  shouting 
Romans  around  you.  Nineteen  centuries  have 
stood  aside  that  you  might  attend  the  funeral  of 
Caesar  and  witness  for  yourself  the  beginning  of 
the  downfall  of  imperial  Rome.  Shakespeare  did 
not  make  the  facts,  but  he  did  more  than  any  other 
one  man  to  make  the  associations  that  cluster 
forever  about  the  facts. 

"But,"  you  ask,  "am  I  reading  true  history? 
Did  Mark  Antony  really  deliver  that  oration?" 
Well,  here  is  what  Shakespeare  had  before  him  :* 
"And  therefore,  when  Caesar's  body  was  brought 
to  the  place  where  it  should  be  buried,  he  made  a 

*  North's  translation  of  Plutarch's  Life  of  Marcus  Antonius   (Skeat's 
edition),    page  165. 


i4  2   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

funeral  oration  in  commendation  of  Caesar, 
according  to  the  ancient  custom  of  praising  noble 
men  at  their  funerals.  When  he  saw  that  the 
people  were  very  glad  and  desirous  also  to  hear 
Caesar  spoken  of,  and  his  praises  uttered,  he 
mingled  his  oration  with  lamentable  words;  and 
by  amplifying  of  matters  did  greatly  move  their 
hearts  and  affections  unto  pity  and  compassion. 
In  fine,  to  conclude  his  oration,  he  unfolded  before 
the  whole  assembly  the  bloody  garments  of  the 
dead,  thrust  through  in  many  places  with  their 
swords,  and  called  the  malefactors  cruel  and 
cursed  murtherers." 

Shakespeare  knew,  then,  that  Antony  spoke 
"in  commendation  of  Caesar,"  that  he  "mingled 
his  oration  with  lamentable  words,"  that  he  moved 
his  hearers  "unto  pity  and  compassion,"  that  he 
held  up  "the  bloody  garments  of  the  dead,"  and 
called  the  malefactors  "cruel  and  cursed  mur- 
therers." What  a  mountain  of  eloquence  Shake- 
speare has  reared  out  of  this  molehill  of  facts!  Is  it 
false  history  that  he  teaches  us?  By  no  means. 
It  is  real  history  illuminated.  Light  does  not  lie. 
To  say  that  Antony  made  a  great  speech  is  only 
a  part  of  the  truth.  Before  I  can  assimilate  this 
bare  fact  I  must  know  what  is  meant  by  a  great 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    143 

speech  at  that  particular  world  crisis.  Shake- 
speare tells  me,  and  no  man  has  lived  who  could 
have  told  me  with  equal  power  and  truth. 

Cleopatra's  name  suggests  to-day  a  certain 
Oriental  magnificence  that  no  one  had  phrased  till 
Shakespeare  phrased  it.  Plutarch  describes  her 
meeting  with  Antony  thus:*  "Therefore,  when 
she  was  sent  to  by  divers  letters,  both  from 
Antonius  himself  and  also  from  his  friends,  she 
made  sq  light  of  it,  and  mocked  Antonius  so 
much,  that  she  disdained  to  set  forward  other- 
wise, but  to  take  her  barge  in  the  river  of  Cydnus; 
the  poop  whereof  was  of  gold,  the  sails  of  purple, 
and  the  oars  of  silver,  which  kept  stroke  in  rowing 
after  the  sound  of  the  music  of  flutes,  howboys, 
cithernes,  viols,  and  such  other  instruments  as 
they  played  upon  in  the  barge.  And  now  for  the 
person  of  herself,  she  was  laid  under  a  pavilion  of 
cloth  of  gold  of  tissue,  apparelled  and  attired  like 
the  goddess  Venus,  commonly  drawn  in  picture: 
and  hard  by  her,  on  either  hand  of  her,  pretty  fair 
boys  apparelled  as  painters  do  set  forth  god  Cupid, 
with  little  fans  in  their  hands,  with  the  which  they 
fanned  wind  upon  her." 

*  North's  translation  of  Plutarch's  Life  of  Marcus  Antonius  (Skeat's 
edition),  pages  174-175. 


144   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

That  is  a  brilliant  description,  but  it  is  overdone. 
It  would  never  have  lived.  The  picture  is  too 
crowded.  It  dazzles  rather  than  illuminates. 
Note  now  how  the  master  lets  his  imagination 
play  swiftly  about  this  scene,  how  he  removes  its 
superfluities,  how  he  interprets  its  parts,  and  sets 
it  at  last  in  the  world's  picture  gallery: 

The  barge  she  sat  in,  like  a  burnished  throne, 

Burn'd  on  the  water:  the  poop  was  beaten  gold; 

Purple  the  sails,  and  so  perfumed  that 

The  winds  were  love-sick  with  them;  the  oars  were  silver, 

Which  to  the  tune  of  flutes  kept  stroke,  and  made 

The  water  which  they  beat  to  follow  faster, 

As  amorous  of  their  strokes.     For  her  own  person, 

It  beggar'd  all  description:  she  did  lie 

In  her  pavilion  —  cloth-of-gold  of  tissue  — 

O'er-picturing  that  Venus  where  we  see 

The  fancy  outwork  nature:  on  each  side  her 

Stood  pretty  dimpled  boys,  like  smiling  Cupids, 

With  divers-colour'd  fans,  whose  wind  did  seem 

To  glow  the  delicate  cheeks  which  they  did  cool, 

And  what  they  undid  did. 

I  like  to  remember  that  Shakespeare  and  Scott 
as  interpreters  of  the  past  did  not  begin  with 
ancient  history.  They  began  nearer  home  and 
nearer  their  own  time.  Shakespeare's  appren- 
ticeship was  served  in  English  history  and  in  a 
period  of  that  history  in  which  he  could  supple- 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    145 

ment  the  old  chronicles  by  consulting  old  men  and 
living  traditions.  He  has  made  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses  the  most  romantic  period  of  English  history 
and  a  stepping-stone  over  which  he  passed  to  more 
remote  periods.  Here  is  his  phrasing,  and  now  the 
traditional  phrasing,  of  how  these  wars  began. 
Richard  Plantagenet,  leader  of  the  faction  of  the 
White  Rose  and  afterward  Duke  of  York,  says: 

*  Let  him  that  is  a  true-born  gentleman 
And  stands  upon  the  honour  of  his  birth, 
If  he  suppose  that  I  have  pleaded  truth, 
From  off  this  brier  pluck  a  white  rose  with  me. 

John  Beaufort,  leader  of  the  faction  of  the  Red 
Rose  and  afterward  Duke  of  Somerset,  replies: 

Let  him  that  is  no  coward  nor  no  flatterer, 
But  dare  maintain  the  party  of  the  truth, 
Pluck  a  red  rose  from  off  this  thorn  with  me. 

The  Earl  of  Warwick  then  prophesies: 

This  brawl  to-day, 
Grown  to  this  faction  in  the  Temple  Garden, 
Shall  send  between  the  red  rose  and  the  white 
A  thousand  souls  to  death  and  deadly  night. 

Now  the  decisive  battles  of  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses   were   fought   in   Warwickshire,   and   War- 

•  Henry  VI,  Part  I,  Act  II,  Scene  IV. 


146  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

wickshire  was  Shakespeare's  home  county.  A 
wealth  of  material  had  been  handed  down  from 
lip  to  lip  and  Shakespeare  made  the  best  use  of  it. 
Much  of  the  history,  therefore,  on  which  he  began 
to  work  was  history  that  he  had  heard  narrated 
in  his  youth  and  early  manhood.  The  battle 
of  Bosworth  Field,  in  which  Richard  III  was 
killed  and  which  ended  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  by 
bringing  together  again  the  two  rival  factions, 
was  fought  only  seventy-nine  years  before  Shake- 
speare was  born.  In  the  preface  to  The  Houses 
of  York  and  Lancaster,  James  Gairdner,  the  his- 
torian, says: 

"For  this  period  of  English  history  we  are 
fortunate  in  possessing  an  unrivalled  interpreter 
in  our  great  dramatic  poet  Shakespeare.  Follow- 
ing the  guidance  of  such  a  master  mind,  we  realize 
for  ourselves  the  men  and  actions  of  the  period  in 
a  way  we  cannot  do  in  any  other  epoch.  .  .  . 
The  doings  of  that  stormy  age,  the  sad  calamities 
endured  by  kings,  the  sudden  changes  of  fortune 
endured  by  great  men,  the  glitter  of  chivalry, 
and  the  horrors  of  civil  war,  all  left  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  the  mind  of  the  nation,  which  was-  kept 
alive  by  vivid  traditions  of  the  past  at  the  time 
that  our  great  dramatist  wrote. " 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    147 

Shakespeare's  English  historical  plays  are  a 
treasure  house  of  historical  interpretation  more 
valuable  than  that  possessed  by  any  other  nation. 
Wherever  they  are  translated  —  and  all  foreign 
languages  know  them  —  a  bit  of  England's  past 
goes  with  them.  They  are  valuable,  however, 
not  so  much  for  their  facts  as  for  the  setting  and 
interpretation  of  the  facts  which  the  dramatist 
has  made.  They  are  valuable  also  because  they 
remind  us  that  in  English  life  Shakespeare  saw 
hints  of  all  life.  In  the  near  he  glimpsed  the 
remote.  In  the  present  he  saw  the  vision  of  the 
past.  He  was  to  look  far  behind  him,  but  he 
looked  around  him  first. 

As  painter  and  spokesman  of  the  past  Scott  is 
the  only  other  writer  of  modern  times  whose  range 
and  appeal  put  him  in  the  class  with  Shakespeare, 
"I  can  call  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep,"  Shake- 
speare makes  one  of  his  characters  say;  and  the 
reply  is: 

Why,  so  can  I,  or  so  can  any  man; 

But  will  they  come  when  you  do  call  for  them? 

They  come  when  Shakespeare  and  Scott  "call 
for  them,"  as  they  come  at  the  call  of  no  others. 
There  have  been  excellent  historical  novels  writ- 


148   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

ten  since  Scott's  time.  Bulwer-Lytton's  Last 
Days  of  Pompeii,  Thackeray's  Henry  Esmond 
and  The  Virginians,  Charles  Kingsley's  Hypalia 
and  Westward  Ho!  Charles  Reade's  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth,  George  Eliot's  Romola,  and  Dick- 
ens's ^ale  of  Two  Cities  have  each  called  a  defi- 
nite and  interesting  portion  of  history  from  "the 
vasty  deep,"  and  thus  enlarged  our  historical 
retrospect.  But  these  authors  came  after  Scott, 
they  built  upon  Scott,  and  they  admitted  or  would 
have  to  admit  their  indebtedness  to  Scott,  as 
Scott  admitted  his  indebtedness  to  Shakespeare. 
Of  none  of  them  could  it  be  said,  as  Goethe  said 
of  Scott:  "He  is  equal  to  his  subject  in  every 
direction  in  which  it  takes  him.  The  king,  the 
royal  brother,  the  prince,  the  head  of  the  clergy, 
the  nobles,  the  magistracy,  the  citizens  and 
mechanics,  the  Highlanders,  are  all  drawn  with 
the  same  sure  hand  and  hit  off  with  equal  truth." 

What  had  been  dry  bones  sprang  at  the  touch 
of  this  Wizard  of  the  North  into  living  forms.  All 
nations  have  gone  to  school  in  history  to  Walter 
Scott.  He  was  more  than  the  founder  of  the  his- 
torical novel.  His  coming  meant  a  new  appeal  for 
history,  a  new  attitude  toward  the  past,  a  new 
source  of  knowledge  and  sympathy,  a  new  realiza- 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    149 

tion  of  the  oneness  of  human  life.  He  did  not 
venture  into  Shakespeare'  s  realm  of  Roman  or 
Greek  history,  but,  beginning  with  Scotland  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  century  in  which  he 
was  born,  he  went  as  far  back  as  the  eleventh. 
Only  once,  in  St.  Ronan's  Well,  did  he  touch  the 
nineteenth  century.  To  the  eighteenth  century 
belong  twelve  of  his  novels,  to  the  seventeenth 
seven,  to  the  sixteenth  four,  to  the  fifteenth  three, 
to  the  fourteenth  one,  to  the  twelfth  three,  and  to 
the  eleventh  one.  Twenty-one  of  his  thirty-two 
novels  have  their  scenes  laid  wholly  or  partly  in 
Scotland.  The  other  places  over  whose  past  he 
has  stretched  his  magic  wand  are  England,  Wales, 
France,  Germany,  Flanders,  Switzerland,  the 
Orkney  and  Shetland  Islands,  Turkey,  Palestine, 
and  India.  In  the  number  of  centuries  and  coun- 
tries traversed  and  in  the  variety  and  vividness 
of  his  work  no  other  novelist  is  his  equal. 

Like  Shakespeare,  Scott  was  more  "folksy" 
than  bookish.  He  tramped  about  the  country  so 
much  in  search  of  historical  places  and  of  people 
who  could  tell  him  of  historical  places  that  his 
father  said  he  was  better  fitted  for  a  peddler  than 
a  lawyer.  He  is  careful  to  tell  us  in  his  notes  and 
prefaces  that  though  he  does  not  copy  landscapes 


ISO  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

and  castles,  those  that  he  had  actually  seen  fur- 
nished him  with  the  main  outlines.  Writing  of  his 
boyhood,  Scott  once  said :  "  Show  me  an  old  castle 
or  field  of  battle  and  I  was  at  home  at  once,  filled 
it  with  its  combatants  in  their  proper  costume, 
and  overwhelmed  my  hearers  by  the  enthusiasm 
of  my  description."  One  of  his  precepts  was: 
"Never  neglect  to  talk  to  people  with  whom  you 
are  casually  thrown. "  His  biographer,  Lockhart, 
says  of  him:  "He  conversed  with  his  coachman 
if  he  sat  by  him  —  as  he  often  did,  on  the  box  — 
with  his  footman,  if  he  chanced  to  be  in  his  rumble. 
Indeed,  he  did  not  confine  Lis  humanity  to  his 
own  people;  any  steady-going  servant  of  a  friend 
of  his  was  soon  considered  as  a  sort  of  friend  too, 
and  was  sure  to  have  a  kind  little  colloquy  to 
himself  at  coming  or  going." 

Almost  every  one  who  in  his  mature  years  has 
lived  for  any  length  of  time  in  a  foreign  land  begins 
by  thinking  foreigners  radically  different  from 
himself  and  from  his  own  people.  But  a  longer 
stay  and  a  deeper  knowledge  lead  him  to  see  that 
the  real  differences  are  few  and  that  human  nature 
is  essentially  one  everywhere.  This  is  the  testi- 
mony of  the  masters  in  all  lands.  But  Shake- 
speare and   Scott  tell  us  more  than  that:  they 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    151 

tell  us  that  human  nature  is  not  only  the  same 
in  different  lands  but  in  different  and  far-distant 
centuries.  They  are  our  most  vivid  historians, 
because,  from  reading  books  of  the  past  and  men 
of  the  present,  they  had  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  human  nature,  though  of  many  patterns,  is 
of  one  substance.  Montaigne's  Essays  was  one 
of  the  few  books  that  we  know  both  Shakespeare 
and  Scott  read.  We  can  be  equally  sure  that 
they  both  applauded  this  saying  of  Montaig  e's: 
"  'Tis  one  and  the  same  nature  that  rolls  on  her 
course,  and  whoever  has  sufficiently  considered 
the  present  state  of  things  might  certainly  con- 
clude as  to  both  the  future  and  the  past." 

We  hear  much  to-day  of  "the  national  memory." 
The  phrase  is  a  vague  but  suggestive  one.  What 
is  the  national  memory?  What  do  nations 
remember?  The  question  can  never  be  accurately 
answered,  because  different  nations  remember  dif- 
ferent things  and  the  things  that  any  one  nation 
remembers  to-day  may  be  differently  interpreted 
and  therefore  differently  remembered  as  the  years 
go  by.  But  are  we  not  now  in  a  position  to 
look  at  the  question  from  a  definite  and  helpful 
point  of  view?  People  do  not  remember  their 
national    history   or    the    world's    history   in    its 


152  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

orderly  sequence.  They  do  not  have  a  text- 
book memory.  Names,  dates,  facts,  events  of  the 
past  are  not  in  their  nature  adhesive.  They 
adhere,  at  least,  not  in  exact  ratio  to  their  impor- 
tance, but  more  nearly  in  ratio  to  the  interest  and 
breadth  and  vision  with  which  they  are  told.  To 
be  remembered,  they  must  be  made  to  fit  not  only 
into  the  framework  of  the  nation's  history,  but 
into  the  framework  of  the  human  heart.  Books, 
talk,  and  newspapers  are  the  most  active  agencies 
in  bringing  facts  to  the  door  of  memory.  It  is 
literature  that  lets  them  in.  A  nation  remembers 
only  a  small  part  of  its  past,  but  that  part  is  the 
part  in  which  literature  has  helped  to  get  the  fact 
ready  for  the  people  and  the  people  ready  for  the 
fact. 

It  is  writers  like  those  about  whom  we  have 
spoken  that  have  done  most  to  store  the  national 
memories.  They  have  said  to  the  past:  "You 
have  certain  things  that  need  to  be  a  part  of  the* 
present.  Give  them  to  us  and  we  will  so  write \ 
them  on  the  tablets  of  the  heart  that  to  know  them 
will  be  to  cherish  them."  And  the  past  has 
yielded  them.  Whatever  men  and  events  of  the 
past  you  can  afford  to  neglect,  these  rescued  men 
and  events  are  not  of  them,  for  these  are  making 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    153 

history.  "Each  deed  thou  hast  done,"  Browning 
makes  young  David  say  to  Saul,  "dies,  revives, 
goes  to  work  in  the  world."  These  are  the  men 
and  events  that  have  died,  that  have  revived,  that 
have  gone  to  work  in  the  world.  They  are  train- 
ing the  will  and  the  imagination  of  young  and  olcu 
They  are  Bringing  the  people  of  each  nation  and 
the  people  of  all  nations  closer  together.  They 
are  building  up  century  by  century  the  inter- 
national mind^frimied— out  of  common_  heroisms 
and  common  admirations.  They  are  making  the 
nation's  memory  a  part  of  the  world's  memory. 


CHAPTER  V 

It  Can  Show  You  the  Glory  of  the  Commonplace 

THERE  is  a  widespread  feeling  that  litera- 
ture, especially  poetry,  has  little  to  do  with 
thought  of  any  kind,  and  even  less  to  do 
with  our  thoughts  about  common  everyday  things. 
Some  one  has  phrased  this  feeling  as  follows: 

In  penning  a  rhyme,  said  a  Poet, 
Have  a  plenty  of  ink  and  then  go  it  — 
With  an  uplifting  rune,  a  maid  and  a  moon, 
Some  theeing  and  thouing,  and  maying  in  June, 
But  never  a  thought  if  you  know  it. 

No  poet  ever  used  such  language  as  that.  A 
poetaster  may  have  written  that  stanza,  but  not 
a  poet.  In  fact,  poetasters  often  refer  to  poetry 
as  nothing  more  than  an  entertainment,  a 
diversion,  a  pastime.  Now,  if  poetry,  if  litera- 
ture in  general,  is  a  mere  pastime,  a  refined 
means  of  idling  away  a  tedious  hour,  an  orna- 
mental accomplishment  admitting  to  society, 
then   it  is  doomed.     There   are   so  many   more 

154 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   155 

valuable  disciplines  knocking  at  the  door  to-day 
that  poetry,  if  it  has  no  higher  claim,  might  just 
as  well  quit  the  field.  iThe  things  that  men  are 
going  to  read  in  the  coming  age  are  the  things  that 
broaden  and  hearten  and  energize  themJ 
|_The  appreciation  of  poetry  is  a  diversion,  but 
it  is  a  vast  deal  more.  It  is  the  most  effective  and 
the  most  accessible  of  all  the  means  whereby  a 
man  may  vitalize  his  thinking  about  the  common, 
elemental  things  of  life."]  And  to  do  this,  to  feel 
the  greatness  and  the  wide  relationships  of  every- 
day things,  is  to  receive  a  new  access  of  power 
and  happiness.  "Genius,"  said  Professor  James 
Frederick  Ferrier,  "is  nothing  else  than  the  power 
of  seeing  wonders  in  common  things." 

But  the  difficulty  lies  here:  so  many  people 
think  that,  while  prose  may  mean  something, 
poetry  is  mere  prettiness.  They  are  convinced 
at  least  that  the  poet,  even  the  great  poet,  did  not 
write  for  them,  but  for  readers  whose  tastes  and 
needs  are  utterly  different  from  theirs.  When 
they  read  poetry,  if  they  deign  to  read  it,  their 
first  thought  is,  "Why  did  not  the  author  put 
what  he  had  to  say  into  fewer  and  plainer  words?" 
Now  the  readers  who  adopt  this  attitude  toward 
poetry  are  just  as  sensible  and  sincere  as  any  other 


156  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

readers.  In  this  matter,  however,  they  are  merely 
drifting  with  the  current.  They  have  adopted 
or  inherited  a  popular  misconception  without 
stopping  to  ask  what  the  poet  or  poem  really 
means.  They  are  thus  depriving  themselves  not 
only  of  a  source  of  unfailing  stimulus  but  of  the 
best  means  by  which  they  can  make  their  own 
thinking  effective. 

Let  us  recur  for  a  moment  to  a  phrase  used  on 
page  7.  In  his  note  to  Lincoln,  written  after  the 
Gettysburg  address,  you  remember  that  Everett 
said:  "I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  flatter  myself 
that  I  came  as  near  to  the  central  idea  of  the 
occasion  in  two  hours  as  you  did  in  two  minutes." 
}LIhe  central  idea  of  the  occasion"  —  that  phrase 
sums  up  admirably  the  goal  of  the  true  poet.  He 
has  a  passion  for  central  ideajy  He  interprets  life 
in  terms  of  central  ideas,  and  he  has  also  the  genius 
so  to  express  these  central  ideas  that  they  take  a 
fresh  hold  on  the  thought  of  the  reader  and  become 
central  also  in  his  thinking.  These  central  ideas 
are  of  right  the  common  property  of  all,  but  they 
have  become  dulled  and  dimmed  by  neglect  or 
misuse.  J^The  poets  are  those  who  in  every  age\ 
keep  the  fires  lighted  on  the  altars  of  the  common 
and  the  central]       * 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   157 

In  reading  poetry,  then,  remember  that  the 
central  thing  is  the  central  thought.  It  was  a 
great  English  poet,  Coleridge,  who  said:  "No 
man  was  ever  yet  a  great  poet  without  being  at 
the  same  time  a  profound  philosopher."  It  was 
a  great  American  poet,  Lowell,  who  said:  "No 
poem  ever  makes  me  respect  its  author  which  does 
not  in  some  way  convey  a  truth  of  philosophy. " 
There  will  be  beauty,  of  course,  but  the  beauty 
came  because  the  thought  was  thought  out  so 
deeply,  so  intensely,  so  completely,  so  relatedly. 
Beauty  in  literature  is  not  something  added  from 
the  outside.  It  is  in  the  framework  of  the  whole. 
It  is  the  product  of  adequate  thinking.  It  is 
thought  intensified.  In  reading  a  poem  do  not 
begin  with  a  search  for  beauty  or  striking  phrases 
or  rare  words  or  fine  figures  of  speech  or  the  struc- 
ture of  sentences  or  the  build  of  stanzas^  Get 
hold  of  the  central  thought.  Turn  it  over  and 
over.  Try  to  put  it  into  your  own  words.  Find 
illustrations  of  it  in  things  that  you  have  seen  or 
heard  or  experienced.  Try  to  see  it  as  a  whole, 
then  in  its  parts,  then  in  the  relation  of  the  parts  to 
the  whole,  then  in  its  radiations  into  other  realms, 
but  stick  to  the  thought.  Whenever  a  man  says 
"How  beautiful!"  before  he  knows  what  a  poem 


158  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

means,  he  does  violence  to  beauty  as  well  as  to 
sense. 

What,  now,  are  some  of  these  common  elemental 
things  about  which  we  think  so  frequently  but 
so  fruitlessly?  No  list  can  be  exhaustive  and, 
besides,  each  reader  will  have  his  own  list.  But 
if  you  will  analyze  the  objects  of  your  thinking 
for  even  one  day  they  will  probably  be  found 
to  fall  into  some  such  threefold  classification  as 
this: 

I.  There  will  be  certain  simple  visible  things 
that  claim  your  attention.  It  may  be  a  flower,  a 
bird,  a  flag,  a  picture,  a  house,  a  street.  It  may 
be  almost  anything  that  nature  shows  us  or  that 
man  has  made.  "At  bottom,"  said  Goethe, 
"no  real  object  is  unpoetical  if  the  poet  knows 
how  to  use  it  properly."  About  most  objects, 
whether  in  nature  or  art,  wholeJigoks  have  been 
written.  There  are  books  on  birds  and  on  almost 
every  kind  of  bird,  as  there  are  books  on  pictures 
and  on  almost  every  single  great  picture.  But 
the  poet  proceeds  differently.  He  follows  Flau- 
bert's advice:  "Look  at  a  tree  until  it  appears  to 
you  just  as  it  appears  to  every  one  else;  then  look 
at  it  till  you  see  what  no  man  has  ever  seen  before." 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    159 

Wordsworth  had  this  service  of  the  poet  in  mind 
when  he  wrote: 


• 


The  outward  shows  of  sky  and  earth, 
Of  hill  and  valley,  he  has  viewed; 

And  impulses  of  deeper  birth 
Have  come  to  him  in  solitude. 

In  common  things  that  round  us  lie 
Some  random  truths  he  can  impart; 

The  harvest  of  a  quiet  eye 

That  broods  and  sleeps  on  his  own  heart. 

Mrs.  Browning  had  the  same  idea  in  mind  when 
she  spoke  of  Euripides  as: 

Our  Euripides,  the  human, 

With  his  droppings  of  warm  tears, 

And  his  touches  of  things  common 
Till  they  rose  to  touch  the  spheres. 

Tennyson  once  found  a  flower  growing  not  in 
the  solid  earth  but  in  the  dust  that  vagrant  winds 
had  swept  into  the  crack  of  a  wall.  The  very 
frailty  and  insignificance  of  such  a  flower  led 
Tennyson  to  take  it  as  the  best  illustration  of  how 
the  little  things  contain  the  great: 

Ekayer  in  the  crannied  wall, 

I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 

I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 

Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 

What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 

I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is. 


160  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

These  lines  do  not  tell  us  much  about  the  flower, 
but,  if  I  mistake  not,  they  at  least  suggest  the 
ministry  of  common  things  when  common  things 
are  viewed  sympathetically.  They  at  least  put  one 
to  thinking  about  the  little-big  things  or  the  big- 
little  things  of  life.  They  remind  us  that  the 
smallest  things  are  ladders  stretching  straight  to 
the  greatest,  and  that  to  know  one  thing  perfectly 
we  should  have  to  know  all  things.  But  might  not 
Tennyson  have  taken  a  grain  of  sand  or  a  particle 
of  dust  instead  of  a  flower?  Hardly.  These  are  not 
growing  things.  He  wanted  to  illustrate  the  one- 
ness of  life  rather  than  the  oneness  of  matter.  He 
took,  therefore,  not  only  a  tiny  growing  object  but 
one  that  appealed  to  man  by  its  beauty.  To  under- 
stand this  little  flower  we  should  have  to  under- 
stand its  divine  cause  and  its  human  effect  — 
that  is,  "what  God  and  man  is." 

We  have  seen  how  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  and 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  Sidney  Lanier  took, 
respectively,  a  chambered  nautilus,  a  huge  rock 
in  the  mountains,  and  a  river  in  Georgia  and  made 
teachers  of  idealism  out  of  them.  William  Words- 
worth has  perhaps  done  more  than  any  one  else 
to  invest  the  common  things  of  nature  with  new 
meaning  and  beauty,  just  as  Kipling  in  modern 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    161 

times  has  surpassed  all  others  in  interpreting  the 
things  that  man  has  made.  Read  Kipling's  Song 
of  the  Banjo  and  you  will  never  again  think  that 
a  banjo  is  nothing  but  a  banjo.  Here  is  the  second 
stanza: 

In  the  silence  of  the  camp  before  the  fight, 

When  it's  good  to  make  your  will  and  say  your  prayer, 
You  can  hear  my  strum pty-tumpty  overnight, 

Explaining  ten  to  one  was  always  fair. 
I'm  the  Prophet  of  the  Utterly  Absurd, 

Of  the  Patently  Impossible  and  Vain  — 
And  when  the  Thing  that  Couldn't  has  occurred, 

Give  me  time  to  change  my  leg  and  go  again. 

Was  the  influence  of  music  on  a  scared  soldier, 
who  knows  that  the  odds  are  ten  to  one  against 
him  in  the  coming  fight,  ever  better  expressed? 
Of  course  the  banjo  does  the  talking:  no  one  else  is 
supposed  to  know  that  the  banjo  is  "the  Prophet 
of  the  Utterly  Absurd. "  The  I-method  is  the  only 
method  possible  in  poems  of  this  sort,  and  Kipling 
is  its  poet-laureate.  The  same  power  of  illumina- 
tion is  shown  in  his  poems  called  The  Derelict, 
The  Coastwise  Lights,  Dee  f -Sea  Cables,  The 
English  Flag,  and  many  others.  |  The  poet  does 
not  merely  describe;  if  that  were  all,  a  kodak 
would  be  mightier  than  the  pen.  The  poet  inter- 
prets; or,  if  he  describes,  he  describes  only  enough 


1 62  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

to  enable  you  so  to  visualize  the  object  that  his 
interpretation  may  be  effective] 

Now  it  would  not  help  you  greatly  if  you  learned 
the  particular  interpretation  or  thought-content 
of  all  of  the  poems  mentioned  or  to  be  mentioned, 
if  you  went  no  farther.  But  suppose  you  learned 
from  poetry  the  habit  of  interpreting  common 
things,  the  habit  of  getting  out  of  them  new 
meaning,  new  beauty,  new  guidance.  Such  an 
acquisition  would  not  only  put  you  in  a  position 
to  judge  the  work  of  poets  wisely  and  well  but 
would  make  the  world  you  live  in  a  larger  and 
richer  world.  It  would  mean  a  permanent  and 
ever-enlarging  addition  to  your  life  force. 

Let  us  take  an  illustration  from  two  poets  who 
interpreted  the  same  thing.  Because  the  sky- 
lark flies  straight  skyward  before  it  sings  or  as  it 
sings,  Wordsworth  sees  in  it  a 

Type  of  the  wise  who  soar,  but  never  roam, 
True  to  the  kindred  points  of  Heaven  and  Home! 

His  whole  poem  is  : 

Ethereal  minstrel!  pilgrim  of  the  sky! 
Dost  thou  despise  the  earth  where  cares  abound? 
Or,  while  the  wings  aspire,  are  heart  and  eye 
Both  with  thy  nest  upon  the  dewy  ground? 
Thy  nest  which  thou  canst  d\;>p  into  at  will, 
Those  quivering  wings  composed,  that  music  still! 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   163 

Leave  to  the  nightingale  her  shady  wood; 

A  privacy  of  glorious  light  is  thine; 

Whence  thou  dost  pour  upon  the  world  a  flood 

Of  harmony,  with  instinct  more  divine; 

Type  of  the  wise  who  soar,  but  never  roam; 

True  to  the  kindred  points  of  Heaven  and  Home! 

Because  the  skylark,  singing  high  above  us,  is 
almost  invisible,  Shelley  compares  it  to  hidden  or 
half-hidden  things.  Note  the  ecstasy  and  aptness 
of  these  similes: 

Like  a  poet  hidden 

In  the  light  of  thought, 
Singing  hymns  unbidden, 
Till  the  world  is  wrought 
To  sympathy  with  hopes  and  fears  it  heeded  not: 

Like  a  high-born  maiden 

In  a  palace  tower, 
Soothing  her  love-laden 

Soul  in  secret  hour 
With  music  sweet  as  love,  which  overflows  her  bower: 

Like  a  glowworm  golden 

In  a  dell  of  dew 
Scattering  unbeholden 
Its  aerial  hue 
Among  the  flowers  and  grass  which  screen  it  from  the  view: 

Like  a  rose  embowered 

In  its  own  green  leaves, 
By  warm  winds  deflowered, 

Till  the  scent  it  gives 
Makes  faint  with  too  much  sweet  these  heavy-winged  thieves. 


i64   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

The  secret  of  it  all,  thinks  Shelley,  is  not  loyalty 
to  "the  kindred  points  of  Heaven  and  Home,"  but 
gladness,  mere  gladness.     The  last  stanza  is: 

Teach  me  half  the  gladness 
That  thy  brain  must  know, 

Such  harmonious  madness 
From  my  lips  would  flow, 
The  world  should  listen  then  —  as  I  am  listening  now. 

But  if  the  last  few  lines  in  each  case  summarize 
the  poet's  interpretation,  why  not  omit  the  rest? 
Why,  in  other  words,  did  the  poet  talk  so  long 
around  his  subject  before  saying  what  he  had  to 
say?  The  reader  who  asks  this  question  is  on  the 
highway  to  a  real  feeling  for  great  poetry.  He  has 
at  least  confronted  poetic  art  with  a  query  that 
goes  to  the  very  heart  of  the  matter.  If  he  will 
stick  to  that  point  of  view,  if  he  will  maintain  the 
same  sort  of  skepticism  in  the  presence  of  every 
poem,  however  praised  the  poem  may  be  in  books, 
he  will  soon  see  poetry  in  a  new  light.  Let  us 
look  a  little  more  closely.  Does  not  every  line, 
every  figure  of  speech,  every  word  that  precedes 
the  concluding  lines  contribute  its  part  toward 
making  those  lines  clear  and  effective?  Read 
\\  ordsworth's  lines  again  and  see  if  every  stream- 
let of  thought  does  not  flow  directly  or  indirectly 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    165 

into  the  last  two  lines.  Omit  the  last  two  lines 
and  see  if  the  preceding  lines  do  not  fall  to  pieces 
—  beautiful  pieces,  perhaps,  but  without  cohesion. 
Shelley's  first  stanza  is: 

Hail  to  thee,  blithe  spirit! 

Bird  thou  never  wert, 
That  from  heaven,  or  near  it, 
Pourest  thy  full  heart 
In  profuse  strains  of  unpremeditated  art. 

If  you  changed  the  two  beginnings  would  you 
not  have  to  change  the  endings?  Does  not  the 
word  "pilgrim,"  in  Wordsworth's  first  line,  strike 
at  once  the  keynote  of  all  the  rest  just  as  the  words 
"blithe  spirit"  strike  the  keynote  of  Shelley's?  A 
pilgrim  is  not  an  aimless  wanderer:  he  has  his  two 
"kindred  points":  he  goes  straight  to  his  sacred 
shrine  and  then  returns  home.  A  blithe  spirit  is 
another  name  for  "unbodied  joy,"  and  this 
thought  of  blitheness,  of  joy,  so  intense  but  in- 
visible that  it  challenges  a  host  of  radiant  compari- 
sons, shines  through  Shelley's  poem  from  beginning 
to  end.     It  only  culminates  in  the  last  stanza. 

When  we  speak,  then,  of  the  central  thought  or 
central  idea  of  a  poem,  we  do  not  mean  a  thought 
or  idea  that  summarizes  all  that  has  been  said 
We  mean  only  such  a  thought  or  idea  as  furnir 


1 66  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

the  foundation  on  which  the  poetic  structure  rests. 
It  is  a  sort  of  nucleus  or  core.  It  gives  also  the 
best  vantage  ground  on  which  to  stand  and  survey 
the  poem  as  a  whole  and  the  best  angle  from  which 
to  see  how  beauty  and  meaning  are  blended  to 
produce  the  culminating  effect* 

II.  But  instead  of  a  visible  object  your  daily 
thought  turns  often  about  some  incident  or  event 
that  has  happened  to  you  or  to  others.  /Poetry 
and  prose  are  full  of  the  simplest  incidents 
glorified  by  interpretation?)  Robert  Burns  once 
upturned  a  mountain  daisy  with  his  ploughshare, 
but  the  little  flower  lives  and  blooms  to-day  as  it 
never  lived  and  bloomed  before,  and  all  because 
the  poet  made  the  incident  the  bearer  of  a  univer- 
sal appeal.  After  a  few  stanzas  of  tender,  exquisite 
thought,  preparing  the  reader  for  an  appeal  to 
mind  and  heart,  Burns  drops  the  Scotch  dialect, 
adopts  the  more  universal  English,  and  crowns 
the  incident  thus: 

Such  is  the  fate  of  artless  maid, 

Sweet  flow'rct  of  the  rural  shade! 

By  love's  simplicity  bctray'd 

And  guileless  trust; 
\ .  Till  she,  like  thee,  all  soil'd,  is  laid 

let  £    ,  Low  i'  the  dust. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    167 

Such  is  the  fate  of  simple  bard, 

On  life's  rough  ocean  luckless  starr'd! 

Unskilful  he  to  note  the  card 

Of  prudent  lore, 
Till  billows  rage  and  gales  blow  hard, 

And  whelm  him  o'er! 
Such  fate  to  suffering  Worth  is  giv'n, 
Who  long  with  wants  and  woes  has  striv'n, 
By  human  pride  or  cunning  driv'n 

To  mis'ry's  brink; 
Till,  wrench'd  of  ev'ry  stay  but  Heav'n, 

He  ruin'd  sink! 
Ev'n  thou  who  mourn'st  the  Daisy's  fate, 
That  fate  is  thine  —  no  distant  date; 
Stern  Ruin's  ploughshare  drives  elate, 

Full  on  thy  bloom, 
Till  crush'd  beneath  the  furrow's  weight 

Shall  be  thy  doom. 

He  pursues  the  same  method  in  his  equally  well 

known  lines   To  a  Mouse,  on  turning  up  her  nest 

with  the  plough.     After  dwelling  on  the  "foresight" 

of  the  mouse  in  laying  by  a  store  for  winter,  the 

poet  makes  the  human  appeal  in  these  stanzas: 

But,  Mousie,  thou  art  no  thy  lane* 
In  proving  foresight  may  be  vain: 
The  best  laid  schemes  o'  mice  an'  men 

Gang  aft  a-gley,f 
An'  lea'e  us  nought  but  grief  an'  pain 
________  For  promis'd  joy. 

*Thou  are  not  alone. 
fGo  often  wrong. 


1 68  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Still  thou  art  blest,  compar'd  wi'  me! 
The  present  only  toucheth  thee: 
But,  och!  I  backward  cast  my  ee 

On  prospects  drear! 
An'  forward,  tho'  I  canna  see, 

I  guess  an'  fear! 

The  two  applications,  you  see,  are  entirely 
different,  though  both  are  made  first  to  mankind 
in  general,  then  to  the  poet  himself.  But  both 
are  equally  apt,  equally  prepared  for,  and  equally 
suggested  by  the  nature  of  the  incident  that  the 
poem  treats. 

Francis  Scott  Key  and  Francis  Miles  Finch 
hold  each  a  secure  place  in  the  hearts  of  the 
American  people  because  each  interpreted  an 
incident  in  terms  of  national  appeal.  Francis 
Scott  Key  was  on  an  American  ship  in  September, 
1 814,  while  the  British  were  bombarding  Fort 
McHenry,  which  protected  Baltimore.  He  was 
not  allowed  by  the  British  to  land,  but  remained 
on  deck  during  the  night,  watching  the  course  of 
every  British  shell  that  was  fired.  "While  the 
bombardment  continued,"  wrote  his  brother-in- 
law,  afterward  Chief  Justice  R.  B.  Taney,  "it 
was  proof  that  the  fort  had  not  surrendered.  .  But 
it  suddenly  ceased  some  time  before  day;  and  as 
they   had    no   communication   with    any   of   the 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   169 

enemy's  ships,  they  did  not  know  whether  the  fort 
had  surrendered,  or  the  attack  upon  it  had  been 
abandoned.  They  paced  the  deck  for  the  residue 
of  the  night  in  painful  suspense,  watching  with 
intense  anxiety  for  the  return  of  day,  and  looking 
every  few  minutes  at  their  watches,  to  see  how 
long  they  must  wait  for  it;  as  soon  as  it  dawned, 
and  before  it  was  light  enough  to  see  objects  at  a 
distance,  their  glasses  were  turned  to  the  fort, 
uncertain  whether  they  should  see  there  the  stars 
and  stripes  or  the  flag  of  the  enemy.  At  length 
the  light  came,  and  they  saw  that  'our  flag  was 
still  there.'  .  .  .  He  then  told  me  that,  under 
the  excitement  of  the  time,  he  had  written  a 
song,  and  handed  me  a  printed  copy  of  The  Star- 
Spangled  Banner." 

In  the  spring  of  1867,  Francis  Miles  Finch,  of 
New  York,  afterward  a  judge  and  for  a  time 
dean  of  the  law  school  of  Cornell  University,  read 
in  a  daily  paper  that  the  women  of  Columbus, 
Mississippi,  had  decorated  alike  the  graves  of 
Federal  and  Confederate  soldiers.  Touched  by 
the  beauty  of  such  an  act  he  wrote  The  Blue  and 
the  Gray,  a  poem  that  more  than  any  other  helped 
to  heal  the  scars  of  war  and  to  usher  in  the  era  of 
complete  reconciliation.     Note  in  the  last  three 


i7o  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

stanzas    how    the    refrains,    like    the    women    of 
Columbus, 

With  a  touch  impartially  tender, 

award  equal  honours  to  both  sides.     Indeed  the 
refrains  carry  the  central  thought: 

So,  when  the  summer  calleth, 
On  forest  and  field  of  grain, 
With  an  equal  murmur  falleth 
The  cooling  drip  of  the  rain: 
Under  the  sod  and  the  dew, 

Waiting  the  judgment  day; 
Wet  with  the  rain,  the  Blue, 
Wet  with  the  rain,  the  Gray. 

Sadly,  but  not  with  upbraiding, 
The  generous  deed  was  done, 
In  the  storm  of  the  years  that  are  fading 
No  braver  battle  was  won: 
Under  the  sod  and  the  dew, 

Waiting  the  judgment  day; 
Under  the  blossoms,  the  Blue, 
Under  the  garlands,  the  Gray. 

No  more  shall  the  war  cry  sever, 

Or  the  winding  rivers  be  red; 
They  banish  our  anger  forever 

When  they  laurel  the  graves  of  our  dead! 
Under  the  sod  and  the  dew, 

Waiting  the  judgment  day: 
Love  and  tears  for  the  Blue, 
Tears  and  love  for  the  Gray. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    171 

James  Russell  Lowell  was  once  in  a  railroad  car 
when  some  one  began  to  talk  about  the  great  poet 
whose  example  we  cited  a  few  pages  back.  The 
result  was  Lowell's  famous  poem,  An  Incident  in  a 
Railroad  Car: 

He  spoke  of  Burns:  men  rude  and  rough 
Pressed  round  to  hear  the  praise  of  one 
Whose  heart  was  made  of  manly,  simple  stuff, 
As  homespun  as  their  own. 

Lowell    learned   from    the    incident   a    new   ideal 
of  poetry: 

Never  did  Poesy  appear 
So  full  of  heaven  to  me,  as  when 
I  saw  how  it  would  pierce  through  pride  and  fear 
To  the  lives  of  coarsest  men. 

It  may  be  glorious  to  write 
Thoughts  that  shall  glad  the  two  or  three 
High  souls,  like  those  far  stars  that  come  in  sight 
Once  in  a  century; 

But  better  far  it  is  to  speak 
One  simple  word,  which  now  and  then 
Shall  waken  their  free  nature  in  the  weak 
And  friendless  sons  of  men; 

To  write  some  earnest  verse  or  line, 
Which,  seeking  not  the  praise  of  art, 
Shall  make  a  clearer  faith  and  manhood  shine 
In  the  untutored  heart. 


i7 2  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

He  who  doth  this,  in  verse  or  prose, 
May  be  forgotten  in  his  day, 
But  surely  shall  be  crowned  at  last  with  those 
Who  live  and  speak  for  aye. 

Now  this  ability  to  vitalize  passing  incidents  by 
interpreting  them  humanly  is  possessed  to  a 
degree  by  every  one,  but  it  is  capable  of  indefinite 
cultivation.  Public  speakers  who  use  apt  anec- 
dotes have  this  power.  Every  one  who  in  public 
or  private  narrates  an  incident  to  illustrate  a 
point  must  first,  if  the  application  is  original, 
have  interpreted  the  incident  and  got  hold  of  its 
central  idea.  Otherwise  he  could  not  attach  the 
incident,  for  central  ideas  are  the  only  hooks  by 
which  proper  attachments  can  be  made.  Ben- 
jamin Franklin's  fund  of  apt  incident  and  illus- 
tration was  due  not  to  breadth  of  reading  but 
to  disciplined  practice  in  making  ordinary  incidents 
yield  their  full  measure  of  everyday  truth.  T^ajte 
such  an  incident  as  that  told  in  The  Whistle,  frem 
which  we  get  the  expression  "to  pay  dear  for  your 
whistle."  This  widely  current  saying  is  mereLy. 
the  interpretation  by  a  wise  man  of  a  childhood 
experience.  But  the  poet's  interpretation  is 
deeper  and  more  many-sided.  It  touches  the 
heart  as  well  as  the  head.     It  brings  beauty  arid>, 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    173 

imagination  to  bear  on  life.  It  finds  us  at  more 
points.  It  is  not  prudential  but  inspirational. 
Franklin's  interpretations  are  admirable  in  their 
way,  but  it  is  not  the  way  of  Burns  in  the  poems 
already  cited.  It  is  not  the  way  of  Cowper  in  his 
lines  On  the  Receipt  of  My  Mother's  Picture,  or  of 
Keats  in  his  poem  On  First  Looking  Into  Chap- 
man's Homer,  or  of  Wordsworth  in  his  poem  called 
/  Wandered  Lonely  as  a  Cloud,  or  of  Browning  in 
his  Incident  of  the  French  Camp. 

Compare  the  two  methods  for  yourself;  or, 
better  still,  take  some  incident  in  your  own  life 
and  try  to  make  a  purely  practical  application  of 
it  in  the  Franklin  way  and  then  a  more  humane 
interpretation  of  it  in  the  spirit,  if  not  in  the  form, 
of  the  poets  just  cited* 

III.  Instead  of  an  incident,  however,  you  find 
yourself  frequently  thinking  about  a  situation. 
A  situation  bears  the  same  relation  to  an  incident 
that  still  water  bears  to  running  water.  In  other 
words,  an  incident  is  a  story,  a  narrative,  while  a 
situation  is  more  like  a  picture.  In  telling  a  story 
that  you  have  read  or  heard,  did  you  ever  notice 
that  you  use  past  tenses,  while  in  describing  a 
picture  you  use  present  tenses?     For  example,  you 


174   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

say:  "It  was  the  story  of  a  man  who  left  home 
and  took  with  him  only  a  dog,"  etc.  But  if  it  is  a 
picture  that  you  are  describing  you  say:  "It  was 
the  picture  of  a  man  leaving  home  and  taking  with 
him  only  a  dog,"  etc.  The  situation  is  like  the 
picture  in  that  you  think  of  it  in  present  tenses. 
There  is  nearly  always  some  narrative  in  poems 
that  treat  a  situation  because  something  usually 
takes  place,  but  the  narrative  is  incidental  or 
preparatory.  The  essential  thing  is  the  resultant 
situation.  Interesting  examples  are  The  Cotter's 
Saturday  Night  by  Burns,  Snow-Boimd  by  Whittier, 
Riipah  by  Tennyson,  The  Bell  Buoy  by  Kipling, 
and  The  Man  with  the  Hoe  by  Edwin  Markham. 

To  make  a  situation  give  up  its  full  yield  of 
suggestion  or  of  guidance  you  must  have  the 
facts  well  in  hand.  Observation,  as  elsewhere, 
must  precede  interpretation.  The  poets  and 
short-story  writers  usually  unlock  a  difficult 
situation  by  the  same  instrument  that  they  used 
in  constructing  it — that  is,  by  imagination.  But 
imagination  does  not,  even  with  them,  take  the 
place  of  a  close  scrutiny  of  the  facts:  it  is  built  on 
such  a  scrutiny.  If  the}'  make  up  the  situation, 
they  put  in  nothing  that  they  do  not  use,  and  use 
nothing  that  they  have  not  deliberately  put  in. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    175 

No  building  was  ever  erected  so  closely  compacted 
or  with  every  part  doing  so  perfectly  its  work  as  is 
the  case  in  the  best  short  poems  or  short  stories. 
These  are  models  for  training  in  accuracy  of 
observation  and  therefore  in  truth  of  interpreta- 
tion. Kipling's  Bell  Buoy,  for  example,  is  of 
course  purely  fanciful.  But  no  one  could  make 
a  bell  buoy  talk  as  this  bell  buoy  talks  unless  he 
had  observed  minutely  the  construction  and  the 
work  both  of  bell  buoys  and  of  church  bells,  and 
unless  he  had  at  the  same  time  a  profound  sym- 
pathy with  certain  elements  of  human  nature. 
The  central  thought  in  the  poem  is  the  contrast 
between  a  service  that  actually  saves  people  and 
one  that  merely  summons  them  to  church  to  be 
saved.  The  bell  buoy,  it  is  true,  brags  outra- 
geously of  his  superiority  to  the  church  bell,  but  he 
is  egged  on  to  it  by  human  nature,  yours  and  mine, 
which  Kipling  is  only  reporting  and  interpreting. 

Among  American  authors,  the  man_wliCi§e_j^ork 
furnishes  the  fairest  field  for  the  study  of  situations 
is  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  The  question  with 
Hawthorne  was  usually  not,  "How  may  I  tell  an 
interesting  story?"  but  "How  may  I  get  out  of  an 
interesting  situation  all  there  is  in  it?"  In  his 
American  Note-Book,  which  contains  jottings  for 


176  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

future  short  stories,  we  find  entries  like  these: 
"An  odd  volume  in  a  large  library.  Every  one 
to  be  afraid  to  unclasp  and  open  it,  because  it  was 
said  to  be  a  book  of  magic."  "A  man,  virtuous 
in  his  general  conduct,  but  committing  habitually 
some  monstrous  crime,  as  murder,  and  doing  this 
without  the  sense  of  guilt,  but  with  a  peaceful  con- 
science, habit,  probably,  reconciling  him  to  it;  but 
something  (for  instance,  discovery)  occurs  to  make 
him  sensible  of  his  enormity.  His  horror  then. " 
Out  of  the  following  jotting  came  Hawthorne's 
story  of  The  White  Old  Maid:  "A  change  from  a 
gay  young  girl  to  an  old  woman;  the  melancholy 
events,  the  effects  of  which  have  clustered  around 
her  character,  and  gradually  imbued  it  with  their 
influence,  till  she  becomes  a  lover  of  sick-chambers, 
taking  pleasure  in  receiving  dying  breaths  and  in 
laying  out  the  dead;  also  leaving  her  mind  full  of 
funeral  reminiscences,  and  possessing  more  ac- 
quaintances beneath  the  burial  turf  than  above 
it." 

But  the  greatest  master  of  the  situation  is 
Robert  Browning.  He  is  the  Shakespeare  of  the 
situation,  the  man  who  first  gave  it  an  adequate 
voice.  It  is  true  that  many  of  his  situations  are 
not  usual  or  ordinary,  but  the  habit  of  getting  out 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    177 

of  an  everyday  situation  all  there  is  in  it  for 
you  can  be  acquired  in  his  pages  better,  I  think, 
than  in  the  pages  of  any  other  writer.  Almost  all 
of  his  shorter  poems  are  dramatic  monologues, 
and  a  dramatic  monologue  is  nothing  but  a  poem 
that  illuminates  a  condensed  situation.  There  are 
only  three  things  to  consider  in  a  dramatic  mono- 
logue: (1)  The  situation  itself;  (2)  the  speaker 
—  there  is  never  more  than  one  —  who  unfolds 
the  situation;  and  (3)  the  person  or  persons 
spoken  to.  The  latter  never  speak,  but  they  are 
an  essential  part  of  the  poem.  The  following 
is  one  of  Browning's  characteristic  dramatic  mono- 
logues: 

THE  PATRIOT 

An  Old  Story 

It  was  roses,  roses,  all  the  way, 

With  myrtle  mixed  in  my  path  like  mad: 

The  house-roofs  seemed  to  heave  and  sway, 
The  church-spires  flamed,  such  flags  they  had, 

A  year  ago  on  this  very  day. 

The  air  broke  into  a  mist  with  bells, 

The  old  walls  rocked  with  the  crowd  and  cries. 

Had  I  said,  "Good  folk,  mere  noise  repels  — 
But  give  me  your  sun  from  yonder  skies!" 

They  had  answered,  "And  afterward,  what  else?" 


i73  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

Alack,  it  was  I  who  leaped  at  the  sun, 

To  give  it  my  loving  friends  to  keep! 
Naught  man  could  do,  have  I  left  undone: 

And  you  see  my  harvest,  what  I  reap 
This  very  day,  now  a  year  is  run. 

There's  nobody  on  the  house-tops  now  — 

Just  a  palsied  few  at  the  windows  set; 
For  the  best  of  the  sight  is,  all  allow, 

At  the  Shambles'  Gate  —  or,  better  yet, 
By  the  very  scaffold's  foot,  I  trow. 

I  go  in  the  rain,  and,  more  than  needs, 

A  rope  cuts  both  my  wrists  behind; 
And  I  think,  by  the  feel,  my  forehead  bleeds, 

For  they  fling,  whoever  has  a  mind, 
Stones  at  me  for  my  year's  misdeeds. 

Thus  I  entered,  and  thus  I  go! 

In  triumphs,  people  have  dropped  down  dead, 
"Paid  by  the  world,  what  dost  thou  owe 

Me?"  —  God  might  question;  now,  instead, 
'Tis  God  shall  repay:  I  am  safer  so. 

At  a  first  reading  this  poem  will  doubtless  seem 
to  you  vague  or  perhaps  meaningless.  But  it  is 
neither.  (i)  The  situation  here  is  the  crisis 
in  a  man's  life.  A  year  ago  he  was  the  popular 
idol  and  might  have  asked  even  the  impossible 
of  the  "good  folk"  who  could  not  do  .enough  for 
him.     Now,  bound  and  stoned,  he  is  being  hurried 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    179 

to  the  scaffold.  The  same  crowd  that  applauded 
him  a  year  ago  has  gone  exultantly  to  see  the 
execution,  except  "a  palsied  few"  who  have  asked 
to  be  wheeled  to  the  windows.  (2)  The  speaker 
is  a  hero  and  fronts  death  philosophically.  There 
is  not  a  word  of  complaint.  He  even  prefers  death 
now  to  death  a  year  ago.  Had  it  come  then,  in 
triumph,  God  would  have  required  much,  for 
much  had  been  given.  Now,  however,  the  injus- 
tice of  it  all  puts  God  in  his  debt.  That,  at  least, 
is  the  way  the  patriot  feels  about  it.  (3)  The 
person  addressed  is  referred  to  in  only  one  line, 
"And  you  see  my  harvest."  He  is  doubtless  the 
sheriff,  an  officer  who  had  witnessed  many  similar 
revulsions  of  public  feeling  and  who  was  also  near 
enough  to  the  patriot  to  hear  what  was  said.  He 
knew  better  than  any  one  else  that  it  was  "an  old 
story,"  though  he  says  nothing. 

Was  the  fickleness  of  the  mob  ever  portrayed 
more  vividly?  Yet  not  a  word  is  said  about 
fickleness.  You  have  to  make  your  own  inter- 
pretation, but,  as  in  real  life,  your  interpretation 
will  be  valid  in  exact  proportion  to  your  mastery 
of  all  the  details  that  make  the  situation  what 
it  is. 

Do  we  not  begin  to  see  now  how  and  why  the 


i  So  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

poets  make  their  appeal?  They  do  not  argue. 
They  take  common  objects  or  incidents  or  situa- 
tions and  let  the  central  thought  out.  Every  great 
piece  of  literature  is  a  sort  of  emancipation  proc- 
lamation. The  "imprisoned  splendour"  was 
already  there:  it  needed  only  to  be  liberated. 
Sometimes  this  imprisoned  splendour,  when  it  is 
released,  takes  the  form  of  patriotism  as  in  Burns's 
Scots,  wha  hae  zvi*  Wallace  bled;  sometimes  of  love 
as  in  Coleridge's  Genevieve;  sometimes  of  the  hom- 
ing instinct  as  in  John  Howard  Payne's  Home, 
Sweet  Home;  sometimes  of  mournful  remembrance 
as  in  Poe's  Raven;  sometimes  of  a  call  to  service 
in  a  never-ending  conflict  as  in  Lowell's  lines  on 
The  Present  Crisis;  sometimes  of  a  plea  for  the 
poor  who,  perhaps  with  unfulfilled  renown,  lie  in 
unhonoured  graves  as  in  Gray's  Elegy.1  But  there 
is  always  a  central  thought  and  this  thought  is 
usually  the  heart  of  some  unrealized  object  or 
incident  or  situation. 

Men  are  learning  every  day  the  greatness  of 
what  used  to  be  called  the  commonplace.  But 
they  have  not  yet  learned  that  the  glory  of  the 
commonplace  was  itself  a  commonplace  to  Burns, 

'The  central  thought  in  Gray's  Elegy  is  the  country  churchyard  versus 
Westminster  Abbey.  The  poem  is  not  a  rambling  meditation  on  death 
in  general. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    1S1 

Goethe,   Browning,   Emerson,   and   men  of  their 
kind.     Emerson  spoke  for  them  all  when  he  said: 

'Tis  not  in  the  high  stars  alone, 
Nor  in  the  cup  of  budding  flowers, 
Nor  in  the  redbreast's  mellow  tone, 
Nor  in  the  bow  that  smiles  in  showers, 
But  in  the  mud  and  scum  of  things 
There  alway,  alway  something  sings. 


CHAPTER  VI 
It  can  give  you  the  mastery  of  your  own  language 

IT  WILL  be  taken  for  granted  in  this  chapter 
that  "your  own  language"  is  the  English 
language.  Illustrations  will,  therefore,  be 
drawn  only  from  English.  But  the  principle 
holds  good  for  all  languages:  the  only  way  to 
master  a  language  is  to  get  at  it  through  litera- 
ture, not  through  text-books  on  language. 

Hitherto  we  have  spoken  of  literature  as 
thought  and  mood.  We  are  now  to  speak  of 
it  as  fgj;m.  Thought  and  mood  cannot  be  com- 
municated till  they  are  put  into  some  sort  of 
form.  But  when  they  are  clothed  or  "fleshed," 
as  Carlyle  would  have  us  say,  in  written  words,  we 
can  communicate  them  to  others,  we  can  keep 
them  by  us,  we  can  talk  about  them  as  easily  as 
we  talk  about  trees  or  houses.  |  Form  is  not  only 
the  dress  or  flesh  of  thought:  it  is  the  net  in  which 
we  capture  and  keep  thought  for  futpre  useT] 
One  of  the  most  astonishing  things  about 
182 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME  183 

literature  is  the  fewness  of  the  forms  or  nets 
necessary  to  hold  it.  From  Homer  to  Kipling 
there  stretch  about  three  thousand  years.  Books 
have  been  written  in  all  of  these  years,  but  when 
we  come  to  sum  up  the  forms  that  literature  has 
taken  we  find  they  are  only  eleven.  Every  great 
thought  that  has  come  down  to  us  has  been 
housed  in  one  of  these  eleven  forms  or  types. 
They  include,  in  p_oelry,  epic  poems  or  epics, 
lyric  poems  or"  lyrics,  dramatid  poems  or  dramas, 
and  balfads;  they  include,  in^prose,  histories, 
orations,  biograpnies,  letters,  essays,  novels,  and 
short  stories.  Many  books  have  been  written 
about  each  of  these  types  of  literature,  but  the 
best  way  to  learn  them  is  not  from  books  about 
them  but  from  specimens  of  them.  If  you  will 
read  only  a  few  standard  specimens  of  each  of 
these  types  and  then  try  to  put  into  plain  language 
how  each  type  differs  from  every  other  type,  you 
will  have  taken  an  important  step  in  understand- 
ing and  appreciating  the  whole  question  of  literary 
form.  In  fact,  this  way  of  studying  literature  — ■ 
by  types,  I  mean,  instead  of  by  nations  or  literary 
epochs  —  is  becoming  more  and  more  popular 
every  year.  Let  us  glance  rapidly  at  these  types 
in  English  and  American  literature. 


1 84  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

In  epic  poetry  the  English-speaking  world 
has  nothing  equal  to  Homer's  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
or  Virgil's  Aeneid.  These  are  long  narrative 
poems  dealing  with  a  nation's  heroic  past.  Mil- 
ton's Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Regained  are 
long  narrative  poems  and  are  therefore  epics. 
But  they  are  not  national  epics.  They  deal 
with  events  that  did  not  concern  England  any 
more  than  they  concerned  other  nations.  In 
American  literature  our  best  epics  are  minor  epics. 
The  narrative  poems  of  Longfellow,  Evangeline, 
Hiawatha,  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish, 
and  Paul  Revere's  Ride,  are  the  best  known  of 
these. 

In  lyric  poetry  —  that  is,,  in  short  poems  that 
express  personal  emotions  —  the  literature  of  the 
English-speaking  race  is  as  rich  as  the  literature 
of  any  nation  in  history.  The  four  volumes  of 
select  poetry  mentioned  on  pages  32-33  contain 
hardly  anything  except  lyric  poetry.  All  hymn- 
books  are  made  up  of  lyric  poems,  because  they  ex- 
press personal  emotions  —  the  joys  and  sorrows, 
the  faith  and  hope  of  those  that  wrote  them  and  of 
those  that  sing  them.  But  if  a  poem  tells  a  story, 
like  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner,  or  Clement 
Clarke  Moore's    The  Night  Before   Christmas,  or 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    185 

Fitz-Greene  Halleck's  Marco  Bozzaris,   it  is  epic, 
not  lyric. 

The  drama,  like  the  epic,  is  a  narrative  and  a 
rather  long  narrative.  But  it  is  written  not  to  be 
read  but  to  be  seen.  The  question  in  the  drama- 
tist's mind  is  not  "How  would  this  read?"  but 
"How  would  this  look  on  the  stage?"  Shake- 
speare, of  course,  gives  England  first  rank  in  the 
drama.  In  America  we  have  no  national  drama.  2 
American  history  furnishes  excellent  themes, 
however,  for  dramatic  treatment,  and  there  is  a 
prospect  just  now  for  better  dramas  than  we  have 
ever  had.     But  as  yet  it  is  only  a  prospect. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  ballads.  The  first  are 
the  old  ballads  which  nobody  wrote  but  which  just  \ 
grew  up  around  some  heroic  or  pathetic  event. 
Of  course  somebody  must  have  made  a  beginning, 
but  as  the  ballad  passed  down  from  sire  to  son 
and  from  century  to  century  it  grew  so  in  the 
handling  that  it  is  customary  now  to  say  that  the 
people  made  it.  England  and  Scotland  have 
three  hundred  and  five  of  these.  The  best  known 
are  perhaps  Sir  Patrick  Spens,  Bonny  Barbara 
Allen,  and  The  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot,  sometimes 
called  Chevy  Chase.  America  is  not  old  enough 
for   this    sort   of   ballad,    though    Yankee   Doodle 


1 86  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

almost  belongs  here.  The  second  kind  of  ballad 
is  the  modern  or  imitation  ballad.  The  two  best 
in  American  literature  seem  to  me  Longfellow's 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  and  George  Henry  Boker's 
Ballad  of  Sir  John  Franklin.  Read  the  three 
folk-ballads  just  mentioned  and  see  if  you  cannot 
tell  why  these  two  American  poems  are  called 
imitation    ballads. 

In  the  writing  of  history  the  greatest  genius 
that  England  has  produced  is  Edward  Gibbon. 
His  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  has  held  its  own  better  and  has  had  more 
influence  upon  other  writers  of  history  than  any 
other  single  history  written  by  an  Englishman. 
The  history  of  England  has  been  written  with 
most  charm  by  the  Earl  of  Clarendon,  David 
Hume,  Macaulay,  and  Froude.  Each  has  treated, 
however,  only  a  section  of  English  history.  The 
most  widely  read  and  the  most  readable  history 
of  England  from  the  beginning  to  the  present 
time  is  J.  R.  Green's  History  of  the  English  People. 
Our  American  classics  —  those  about  which  there 
can  be  least  dispute  —  are  George  Bancroft's 
History  of  the  United  States,  though  it  ends  with 
the  Revolutionary  Period;  William  Hickling  Pres- 
cott's    History    of   the    Reign    of   Ferdinand   and 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME  187 

Isabella;  John  Lothrop  Motley's  Rise  of  ike  Dutch 
Republic;  Francis  Parkman's  France  and  England 
in  North  America,  and  John  Fiske's  The  Critical 
Period  of  American  History.  In  both  England 
and  America  the  cooperative  method  of  writing 
history  is  now  coming  more  and  more  into  vogue. 
There  is  usually  one  editor-in-chief  with  a  number 
of  associates  under  his  general  direction.  There 
are  excellencies  and  defects  in  the  cooperative 
method.  The  variety  of  the  parts  is  sometimes 
greater  than  the  oneness  of  the  whole.  It  is  a 
case  where  the  whole  may  not  be  equal  to  the 
sum  of  all  its  parts. 

In  oratory  the  two  English-speaking  peoples 
have  for  a  century  and  a  half  taken  the  lead. 
This  is  due  partly  to  the  nature  of  the  English 
language,  which  lends  itself  easily  to  the  uses  of 
public  address,  partly  to  the  freedom  of  speech 
which  the  two  countries  have  enjoyed,  and  partly 
to  the  bigness  of  the  subjects  which  they  have 
had  to  discuss.  In  both  countries  great  orations 
have  marked  the  pathway  of  advancing  democ- 
racy. The  average  American  is  a  better  public 
speaker  than  the  average  Englishman,  but  Eng- 
land has  had  a  few  orators  whose  speeches  have 
stood  the  test  of  time  better  than  the  speeches 


1 88  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

of  American  orators.  Oratory  is  diffused  through- 
out America;  it  tends  more  to  crystallize  in  Eng- 
land. Judged  by  the  test  of  time,  Edmund 
Burke  was  the  greatest  orator  of  the  English- 
speaking  race,  and  Daniel  Webster  was  the  great- 
est orator  of  America.  You  can  find  no  better 
examples  of  modern  oratory  than  Burke's  speech 
on  Conciliation  with  America  and  Webster's 
Reply  to  Hayne.  Read  also  the  speech  of  Hayne 
to  which  Webster  was  replying.  These  speeches 
deal  with  issues  long  since  dead,  but  they  deal 
with  them  in  a  spirit  and  method  that  can  be 
applied  equally  as  well  to  issues  of  to-day  and 
to-morrow. 

In  biography  Englishmen  have  been  peculiarly 
successful  with  Englishmen,  while  Americans  have 
succeeded  best  with  those  who  were  not  Americans. 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  remains  the  supreme 
classic,  but  worthy  of  a  place  on  the  shelf  with  it 
are  Southey's  Life  of  Nelson,  Lockhart's  Life  of 
Scott,  Trevelyan's  Life  of  Macaulay,  and  Morley's 
Life  of  Gladstone.  Among  the  greatest  biogra- 
phies of  Americans  by  Americans  may  be  men- 
tioned John  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington, 
Samuel  Longfellow's  Life  of  Longfellow,  and 
Alexander  V.  G.  Allen's  Life  of  Phillips  Brooks. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    189 

Each  of  these  covers  a  distinct  period  of  our 
history  and  appeals  to  a  wide  but  different  range 
of  interests.  Mention  should  be  made  also  of 
Lounsbury's  admirable  though  brief  Life  of 
James  Fenimore  Cooper  in  the  American  Men  of 
Letters  Series.  The  three  works,  however,  that 
have  best  represented  American  scholarship  and 
narrative  skill  in  foreign  lands  are  Irving's  Life 
and  Voyages  of  Columbus,  Motley's  Life  and 
Death  of  John  of  Barneveldt,  and  Parkman's  Mont- 
calm and  Wolfe.  Autobiography  is,  of  course,  a 
kind  of  biography,  and  a  most  interesting  kind. 
With  the  exception  of  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  it 
is  probable  that  The  Autobiography  of  Benjamin 
Franklin  has  found  more  readers  than  any  book 
mentioned  in  this  paragraph.  It  is  a  model  of 
its  kind,  though  it  ends  with  the  year  1757. 
Franklin  died  in  the  year  1790.  Thus  thirty- 
three  years  of  his  life,  years  of  the  greatest  inter- 
national renown,  are  left  unaccounted  for.  For 
these  years  we  must  go  to  Franklin's  letters. 

The  best  letters  are  found  in  biographies.  In 
fact,  it  is  impossible  to  write  a  man's  life  unless 
you  let  his  letters  speak  for  him.  The  letter  is 
one  of  the  oldest  forms  of  literature.  Cicero  has 
left  more  than  eight  hundred  letters.     St.  Paul's 


iqo  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

letters  number  fourteen  and  make  up  about  one 
fifth  of  the  New  Testament.  English  and  Ameri- 
can literature  is  very  rich  in  letters,  perhaps 
richer  than  any  other  literature  except  that  of 
France.  Some  of  these  are  narrative  letters, 
while  others  —  and  these  are  usually  the  most 
entertaining  —  give  only  the  writer's  own  feelings 
about  men  and  things.  Two  of  the  most  famous 
of  the  second  kind  are  Lincoln's  letter  to  Mrs. 
Bixby  (November  21,  1864),  and  Robert  E.  Lee's 
letter  accepting  conditionally  the  presidency  of 
Washington  College  (August  24,  1865).  You  will 
notice  that  no  letter  ever  yet  found  its  way  into 
literature  that  began,  "Yours  of  30th  ult.  rec*d 
and  contents  noted.  In  reply  would  say,"  or  that 
ended,  "Yours  resp.,"  or  "Yours  aff." 

The  essay  is  one  of  the  glories  of  English 
literature.  Bacon,  Addison,  Lamb,  Macaulay, 
Matthew  Arnold,  and  Huxley  are  some  of  those 
who  have  made  the  essay  the  delight  and  the 
power  that  it  is  to-day  among  English-speaking 
people.  There  are  two  kinds  of  essay  —  the 
chatty,  entertaining,  pastime  kind,  and  the  more 
serious  essay  that  seeks  to  inform  and  convince. 
Addison  and  Lamb  lead  the  list  in  the  first  kind; 
Bacon,    Macaulay,   Arnold,    and    Huxley   in   the 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    191 

second  kind.  Our  two  greatest  American  essay- 
ists, Emerson  and  Lowell,  belong  also  to  the  last 
named  class.  The  essayists  who  write  to  enter- 
tain deal  chiefly  with  a  mood  or  fancy;  those 
who  write  to  convince  deal  more  with  what  they 
feel  to  be  the  unsettled  problems  of  life.  But 
no  writer,  however  witty  or  however  learned, 
deserves  the  name  of  essayist  unless  he  can  use 
familiarly  and  effectively  the  resources  of  the 
English  language,  for  the  essay  marks  the  pin- 
nacle of  English  prose  style.  Whether  the  essayist 
entertains  or  informs,  or  whether,  as  usual,  he  does 
both,  he  must  show  himself  a  consummate  master 
of  his  craft.  If  he  does  not,  we  may  call  his 
work  a  treatise  but  not  an  essay. 

The  novel  and  the  short  story  belong  together, 
though  they  did  not  start  together.  They  are 
the  two  youngest  children  in  the  family  of  liter- 
ature and  both  have  epic  blood  in  their  veins. 
The  short  story  is'not  a  condensed  novel  and  the 
novel  is  not  an  expanded  short  story.  They  have 
to  be  planned  differently  from  the  start,  just  as 
a  cathedral  and  a  chapel  have  to  be  planned 
differently;  an  architect  cannot  begin  with  the 
one  and  end  with  the  other  without  making  a 
botch  of  it.     In  novel  writing  England   has   led 


1 92    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

the  world.  Scott,  Dickens,  George  Eliot,  and 
Thackeray,  though  they  did  not  found  the  novel, 
have  done  most  to  show  its  possibilities.  But 
till  the  coming  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and 
Rudyard  Kipling,  England  was  weak  in  short 
stories.  It  had  nothing  to  compare  with  the 
best  short  stories  of  Washington  Irving,  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Bret  Harte, 
Mark  Twain,  or  0.  Henry.  James  Fenimore 
Cooper  was  the  founder  of  the  American  novel 
and  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  in  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
proved  himself  our  greatest  artist  in  the  novel. 
Our  genius  for  narration,  however,  still  finds  its 
natural  channel  in  the  short«.story.  The  short 
story  is  narration  reduced  to  its  essentials.  It  is 
the  old  epic  stripped  for  its  last  race. 

As  soon  as  you  begin  to  think  in  these  eleven 
units  of  literature  you  will  find  your  feeling  for 
form  getting  more  and  more  disciplined.  But 
begin  with  these  units.  The  smallest  units  are 
words;  the  largest  units  are  the  types  just  men- 
tioned. To  begin  with  words,  is  like  beginning 
the  study  of  architecture  by  studying  single 
bricks  or  stones.  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  does  tell 
us  of  a  man  who  carried  a  brick  around  with  him 
as  a  specimen  of  a  house  that  he  wanted  to  sell. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME     193 

But  his  mistake  was  no  greater  than  that  of  the 
man  who  thinks  that  mastery  of  language  should 
begin  with  words.  Words  are  dead  things  till  they 
are  combined  into  one  of  our  eleven  structures. 

When  you  have  read  a  few  specimens  of  each 
of  these  types  you  will  find  yourself  comparing 
them  and  noting  likenesses  and  differences.  You 
remember  that  it  was  said  on  page  32  that  "song 
and  story"  really  include  all  types  of  literature. 
Let  us  consider  the  story  element  first.  How 
many  of  our  eleven  types  tell  a  story?  They  are 
epics,  dramas,  ballads,  histories,  biographies, 
letters  given  over  to  incidents,  novels,  and  short 
stories.  All  of  these  tell  in  different  ways  what 
has  happened  or  what  is  happening.  We  need  no 
other  testimony  to  prove  to  us  that  mankind  has 
always  been  interested  in  events  and  incidents, 
in  things  that  take  place.  We  want  to  absorb 
the  lesson  of  these  haps  or  mishaps  but  cannot 
get  hold  of  them  till  some  one  makes  clear  and 
vivid  the  human  appeal  in  them.  The  remaining 
types  belong  to  the  song  element  in  literature. 
They  have  to  do  not  with  happenings  so  much  as 
with  our  own  thoughts,  moods,  hopes,  ideals, 
impressions,  and  convictions.  We  may  body 
these  forth  in  short  poems  if  we  are  poets,  or,  if 


i94   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

we  are  not  poets,  in  letters  to  our  friends,  in 
addresses  before  an  audience,  or  in  essays  for  the 
general  reader.  Modern  writers  have  found  that 
the  essay  is  the  best  means  of  reaching  a  wide 
audience  if  they  wish  to  inform  or  to  convince, 
just  as  they  have  found  that  the  short  story  is 
the  best  means  of  reaching  a  wide  audience  if 
they  wish  to  narrate.  The  modern  essay  is 
explanation  reduced  to  its  essentials,  just  as  the 
modern  short  story  is  narration  reduced  to  its 
essentials. 

Now  these  two  processes,  explanation^and  nar- 
ration, are  the  processes  that  confront  you  at 
every  stage.  Pick  up  a  newspaper  and  see  if 
its  contents,  its  readable  contents,  do  not  fall 
into  these  two  divisions.  It  is  filled  chiefly  with 
happenings,  local  happenings  or  national  hap- 
penings, or  world  happenings;  the  telegraph  lines 
are  talking  and  they  prefer  narration.  But  you 
find  a  column  or  more  devoted  not  to  happenings 
but  to  comment,  to  explanation,  to  drawing  and 
enforcing  a  lesson.  It  is  the  editorial.  Try  the 
same  plan  with  a  magazine.  See  how  many 
pages  are  devoted  to  events,  real  or  imagined. 
If  they  are  imagined,  we  have  a  shor^  story,  and 
some  magazines  contain  nothing  else.     Then  count 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    195 

the  pages  that  explain  things  or  happenings,  the 
interpretative  part.  How  many  pages  remain? 
Recall,  if  you  can,  all  that  has  been  said  to  you 
to-day.  Was  it  not  either  incident  or  comment? 
Recall  what  you  yourself  have  said.  Is  there 
anything  left  over  after  the  two  pigeon-holes, 
explanation  and  narration,  have  been  filled? 

If  this  is  true,  then  the  way  to  master  your  own  j 
language  is  to  master  it  not  as  it  lies  dead  and 
dismembered  in  text-books  but  as  it  climbs  the 
two  central  peaks  of  explanation,  and  narration. 
These  are  the  uses  to  which  you  will  have  to 
put  language  every  day  that  you  live.  Perhaps 
it  seems  to  you  that  I  ought  to  say  description 
and  narration  rather  than  explanation  and  narra- 
tion. But  description  is  a  kind  of  explanation, 
a  kind  that  has  to  do  chiefly  with  the  outside 
of  things.  When  you  try  to  make  me  see  the 
outside  of  a  machine,  you  describe  it;  when  you 
try  to  make  plain  to  me  its  workings,  you  explain 
it.  Description  is  one  of  the  treasure  houses  of 
literature,  but  it  is  situated  on  the  premises  of 
explanation. 

There  is  language  discipline,  of  course,  in  all 
types  of  literature,  but  there  is  the  most  helpful 
discipline  in  the  types  that  fit  most  accurately 


1 96   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

our  everyday  thoughts.  We  give  ourselves  daily 
exercise  in  explaining  things  and  in  narrating 
things.  We  do  this  in  prose,  not  in  poetry.  The 
road  leading  to  mastery,  then,  starts  from  prose, 
and  from  the  kinds  of  prose  that  best  meet  our 
daily  needs.  We  may  pass  from  these  to  other 
types  —  these,  in  fact,  include  the  other  types 
—  but  the  shortest  and  surest  road  begins  in 
the  prose  essay  and  the  prose  short  story. 

A  few  specimen  collections  of  short  stories  have 
already  been  mentioned.1  There  are  equally  good 
collection  of  essays.  Among  these  are  English 
Essays,  collected  and  edited  by  Walter  C.  Bronson; 
The  GreaU  English  Essayists,  with  introductory 
essays  and  notes  by  William  J.  Dawson  and  Con- 
ingsby  W.  Dawson;  and  A  Book  of  English  Essays 
(1600-1900),  selected  by  Stanley  V.  Alakower  and 
Basil  H.  Blackwell.  The  main  objection,  however, 
to  compilations  of  this  sort  is  that  they  do  not  con- 
tain in  every  case  the  whole  of  each  essay  included. 
The  editors  omit  parts,  though  they  try  to  omit 
only  such  parts  as  will  not  leave  the  rest  scrappy. 
You  will  find  it  best,  far  best,  I  think,  to  begin 
with  the  essays  of  Macaulay,  Arnold,  and  Huxley. 
These  are  models  of  clear  thinking  and  effective 

'See  page  33 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME  197 

writing.  Each  essay  discusses  one  big  theme,  and 
the  essay  is  built  around  that  theme  as  closely  as 
a  walnut  is  built  around  its  kernel.  These  writers 
had  a  genius  for  essentials  and  an  equal  genius  for 
cutting  out  unsparingly  the  things  that  do  not 
count.  Each  is  a  living  force  in  the  world  to-day 
—  Macaulay  in  history  and  biography,  Arnold  in 
our  ideas  of  culture,  and  Huxley  in  the  meaning 
and  service  of  science.  But  each  is  a  force  not 
only  in  what  he  says  but  in  the  way  he  says  it. 
They  are  the  three  men  who  did  more  than  any 
other  three  of  their  time  to  make  the  art  of  ex- 
planation both  interesting  and  effective.  You 
cannot  follow  them  or  any  one  of  them  long  with- 
out finding  your  own  power  to  explain  growing 
by  what  it  feeds  on. 

It  is  easy  enough,  however,  to  point  to  the  right 
authors.  It  is  easy  to  read  them.  More  im- 
portant than  either  is  so  to  read  them  as  to  get 
power  from  their  pages.  There  are  thousands 
of  readers  of  good  literature  whose  power  of_self- 
expression  shows  no  improvement  from  year  to 
year.  But  it  is  well  to  remember  also  that  wh< 
ever  successful  writers  have  expressed  their  in- 
debtedness, whenever  they  have  named  the  source 
or  the  first  impulse  from  which  their  power  came, 


1 98   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

it  was  always  to  literature  that  they  pointed 
us,  never  to  a  dictionary,  or  a  grammar,  or  a 
rhetoric. 

Why?  Are  dictionaries,  grammars,  and  rhetorics 
useless?  By  no  means.  They  are  useful  as  step- 
ping-stones but  not  as  final  resting-places.  They  are 
useful  in  calling  attention  to  the  speech  of  the  mas- 
ters, in  telling  us  what  to  look  for  and  what  not  to 
look  for,  in  making  the  search  interesting  and  the  path 
straight.  But  whenever  they  satisfy  or  blunt 
our  desire  to  go  beyond  them  they  are  worse 
than  useless;  they  rob  rather  than  enrich.  They 
are  then  like  the  bayous  along  the  Mississippi. 
These  streams  flow  from  the  great  river  instead 
of  into  it:  they  are  tributaries  turned  wrong  end 
foremost.  When  Goethe  was  accused  of  being  a 
skeptic  he  replied  that  his  was  "the  active  skep- 
ticism, whose  sole  aim  is  to  conquer  itself."  That 
is  exactly  the  motive  with  which  all  language- 
helps  should  be  used.  Your  dependence  on  them 
should  conquer  itself  as  soon  as  possible.  They 
should  create  a  thirst,  but  this  thirst  -should  be 
not  for  more  of  them  but  for  the  speech  of  the 
masters  from  which  they  derive  every  jot  and 
tittle  of  the  authority  that  they  possess. 

If  you  were  to  approach  Macaulay  or  Arnold 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    199 

or  Huxley  through  the  dictionary,  you  would 
approach  them  through  their  words  —  that  is, 
through  the  words  unfamiliar  to  you.  You  would 
say:  "These  writers  know  a  great  many  words 
that  I  do  not  know.  I  will  not  let  one  of  them 
escape  me.  With  the  aid  of  a  good  up-to-date 
dictionary,  I  am  going  to  look  up  every  word  un- 
known to  me  and  so  add  it  to  my  speech-utensils." 
That  sounds  reasonable,  but  it  is  not.  At  least 
it  is  not  the  right  motive  or  method  with  which  to 
begin  the  systematic  study  of  an  author  if  you 
are  studying  him  for  language  mastery.  Suppose 
you  were  to  read  all  the  essays  of  Macaulay  and 
Arnold  and  Huxley  and  should  make  a  list  of  all 
the  words  found  in  them  that  you  did  not  know. 
If  you  memorized  the  meanings  of  these  words 
perfectly,  would  your  daily  speech  show  a  notice- 
able improvement?  I  do  not  think  so.  These 
words  would  be  added  to  your  word-collection, 
but  not  necessarily  to  your  speech-utensils.  Per- 
haps you  do  not  need  these  words  except  to  under- 
stand passages  in  which  they  occur?  That  is 
something,  of  course,  but  it  is  a  mere  by-product. 
Unless  your  daily  thought  demands  these  words, 
unless  you  need  them  in  your  work,  it  will  do  you 
little  good  to  list  and  learn  them. 


200  WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

If  you  will  think  a  moment  about  your  own 
vocabulary  —  that  is,  about  the  stock  of  words 
whose  meanings  you  know  —  you  will  find  that  it 
may  be  divided  into  two  distinct  parts.  You 
have  really  two  vocabularies.  There  is,  first,  the 
vocabulary  that  you  actually  use.  There  is, 
second,  the  vocabulary  that  you  know  but  never 
use.  The  first  is  your  writing  and  speaking  vocab- 
ulary; it  contains  the  words  so  thoroughly  mas- 
tered that  they  do  immediately  the  bidding  of 
your  thought.  This  is  your  dynamic  vocabulary, 
your  vocabulary  of  power.  The  second  is  your 
reading  and  hearing  vocabulary;  it  contains  the 
words  which  you  know  when  you  read  them  or 
hear  them  but  which  have  hitherto  refused  to  do 
the  bidding  of  your  thought.  You  have  never 
used  them.  This  is  your  static  vocabulary,  your 
vocabulary  of  knowledge.  Knowledge  is  not 
power  in  this  case  —  it  is  only  possible  power; 
it  becomes  actual  power  only  when  a  passive 
word  steps  over  into  the  list  of  active  words  and 
does  work  there  for  which  it  is  better  fitted  than 
the  word  that  you  have  been  using  in  its  place. 
Every  man  does  well  to  increase  his  knowledge- 
vocabulary;  he  does  vastly  better  to  increase  his 
power- vocabulary.     Knowledge  words  are  lumber 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    201 

waiting  in  the  factory;  power  words  are  furniture 
used  in  the  home. 

The  masters  of  language  at  the  present  time, 
those  whose  works  carry  farthest,  are  not  those 
whose  pages  would  furnish  you  with  the  longest  list 
of  new  words.  They  are  those  who  use  familiar 
words  in  apt  but  unexpected  places;  they  show 
you  old  friends  with  new  powers;  they  know  not 
only  the  first  meanings  of  everyday  words  but 
the  wider  service  that  these  words  can  do  if 
properly  harnessed  to  other  words.  Literature, 
not  the  dictionary,  is  a  storage-battery  and  the 
only  storage-battery  for  this  kind  of  word-power, 
the  word-power  that  comes  from  the  known  but 
unused,  from  the  familiar  but  unrealized.  Ma- 
caulay,  Arnold,  and  Huxley,  if  rightly  used,  can 
double  your  word-power  without  adding  a  new 
word  to  your  vocabulary.  But,  whether  known 
or  unknown,  words  do  not  furnish  the  right  method 
of  approach.  We  must  begin  with  a  larger  unit, 
with  a  cluster  of  words,  and  go  from  the  cluster 
to  the  individual  word.  A  word  is  not  alive  till 
it  finds  itself  in  company. 

If  you  approach  our  three  writers  from  the  side 
of  grammar,  you  approach  them  through  their 
sentences.     The  sentence  is  to  grammar  what  the 


202    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

word  is  to  the  dictionary.  But  is  the  sentence 
the  right  unit?  There  are  undoubtedly  many 
brilliant  sentences  to  be  found  in  the  pages  of 
our  three  essayists.  Here  are  a  few  that  circulate 
as  current  coin.  From  Macaulay:  "Men  are 
never  so  likely  to  settle  a  question  rightly  as  when 
they  discuss  it  freely."  "He  [Byron]  had  a  head 
which  statuaries  loved  to  copy,  and  a  foot  the 
deformity  of  which  the  beggars  in  the  street 
mimicked."  "An  acre  in  Middlesex*  is  better 
than  a  principality  in  Utopia."  "The  Puritan 
hated  bear-baiting,  not  because  it  gave  pain  to 
the  bear  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  spec- 
tator." From  Arnold:  "Culture  looks  beyond 
machinery,  culture  hates  hatred:  culture  has  one 
great  passion,  the  passion  for  sweetness  and  light." 
"Genius  is  mainly  an  affair  of  energy."  "Poetry 
is  simply  the  most  beautiful,  impressive,  and 
widely  effective  mode  of  saying  things,  and  hence 
its  importance."  "When  we  are  asked  further, 
'What  is  conduct?'  let  us  answer,  'Three  fourths 
of  life.'  "  From  Huxley:  "If  a  little  knowledge 
is  dangerous,  where  is  the  man  who  has  so  much 
as  to  be  out  of  danger?"     "Logical  consequences 

*Middlesex  is  next  to  the  smallest  county  in  England,  but  has  next  to 
the  largest  population.  Utopia,  or  Nowhere,  is  the/name  given  by  Sir 
Thomas  More  (1478-1535)  to  the  imaginary  island  about  which  he  wrote. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    203 

are  the  scarecrows  of  fools  and  the  beacons  of 
wise  men."  "Veracity  is  the  heart  of  morality." 
"The  great  end  of  life  is  not  knowledge,  but 
action." 

Suppose  we  did  with  these  sentences  all  that 
grammar  asks  us  to  do.  Suppose  we  classified 
them,  took  them  to  pieces,  put  them  together 
again,  learned  to  name  and  know  all  their  parts  — 
should  we  be  much  better  fitted  to  explain  every- 
day matters  to  others?  Should  we  even  have 
found  the  real  thought-gait  of  our  writers? 
Brilliant  sentences  do  not  make  a  great  writer. 
A  great  writer  is  a  builder,  and  the  sentence,  like 
the  word,  is  not  the  building  unit.  Sentences 
are  not  the  links  of  prose  composition.  Even  if 
we  learn  how  to  construct  a  few  brilliant  sentences, 
if  we  learn  how  to  make  and  analyze  all  the  kinds 
of  sentences  that  grammar  calls  for,  we  need 
something  around  which  to  build  them,  something 
to  practise  them  on.  We  learn  to  shoot  not  by 
shooting  but  by  shooting  at  a  target. 

Putting  grammar  aside,  let  us  try  rhetoric.  If 
you  approach  our  three  writers  through  one  of 
the  old  rhetorics  written  a  generation  ago,  you 
will  find  yourself  plunged  into  figures  of  speech, 
into   metaphors,    similes,    and   the   like.     If   you 


2o4    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

approach  our  writers  through  a  good  modern 
rhetoric,  you  will  find  the  emphasis  put  not  upon 
figures  of  speech,  not  upon  words  or  sentences, 
but  upon  the  paragraph.  The  paragraph  meets 
all  the  requirements  that  good  writing  demands. 
It  is  the  real  unit  of  authorship.  The  paragraph 
is  a  cluster  of  cooperative  sentences  making  clear 
a  single  thought.  It  is  like  the  numeral  ioo: 
if  you  can  count  ioo,  you  can  count  1,000,000,000 
if  you  live  long  enough.  Every  prose  type  of 
literature  is  a  chain  in  which  the  successive  links 
are  paragraphs.  If  it  is  a  paragraph  that  explains, 
it  is  an  essay  in  miniature;  if  it  is  a  paragraph 
that  narrates,  it  is  a  short  story  in  miniature. 
The  art  of  using  language  effectively  is  the  art 
of  building  and  joining  paragraphs.  Here  are 
two  successive  paragraphs  from  each  of  our  chosen 
essayists: 

FROM    MACAULAY* 

"The  perfect  historian  is  he  in  whose  work 
the  character  and  spirit  of  an  age  is  exhibited 
in  miniature.  He  relates  no  fact,  he  attrib- 
utes no  expression  to  his  characters  which 
is  not  authenticated  by  sufficient  testimony. 


*£ssay  on  History. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   205 

But  by  judicious  selection,  rejection,  and 
arrangement,  he  gives  to  truth  those  attrac- 
tions which  have  been  usurped  by  fiction. 
In  his  narrative  a  due  subordination  is  ob- 
served: some  transactions  are  prominent; 
others  retire.  But  the  scale  on  which  he 
represents  them  is  increased  or  diminished, 
not  according  to  the  dignity  of  the  persons 
concerned  in  them,  but  according  to  the 
degree  in  which  they  elucidate  the  condition 
of  society  and  the  nature  of  man.  He  shows 
us  the  court,  the  camp,  and  the  senate.  But 
he  shows  us  also  the  nation.  He  considers 
no  anecdote,  no  peculiarity  of  manner,  no 
familiar  saying,  as  too  insignificant  for  his 
notice  which  is  not  too  insignificant  to  illus- 
trate the  operation  of  laws,  of  religion,  and 
of  education,  and  to  mark  the  progress  of 
the  human  mind.  Men  will  not  merely  be 
described,  but  will  be  made  intimately 
known  to  us.  The  changes  of  manners  will 
be  indicated,  not  merely  by  a  few  general 
phrases  or  a  few  extracts  from  statistical 
documents,  but  by  appropriate  images  pre- 
sented in  every  line* 

"If   a   man,    such   as   we    are    supposing, 


2o6    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

should  write  the  history  of  England,  he 
would  assuredly  not  omit  the  battles,  the 
sieges,  the  negotiations,  the  seditions,  the 
ministerial  changes.  But  with  these  he 
would  intersperse  the  details  which  are  the 
charm  of  historical  romances.  At  Lincoln 
Cathedral  there  is  a  beautiful  painted  window 
which  was  made  by  an  apprentice  out  of  the 
pieces  of  glass  which  had  been  rejected  by 
his  master.  It  is  so  far  superior  to  every 
other  in  the  church  that,  according  to  the 
tradition,  the  vanquished  artist  killed  him- 
self from  mortification.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in 
the  same  manner,  has  used  those  fragments 
of  truth  which  historians  have  scornfully 
thrown  behind  them  in  a  manner  which  may 
well  excite  their  envy.  He  has  constructed 
out  of  their  gleanings  works  which,  even  con- 
sidered as  histories,  are  scarcely  less  valuable 
than  theirs.  But  a  truly  great  historian 
would  reclaim  those  materials  which  the 
novelist  has  appropriated.  The  history  of 
the  government  and  the  history  of  the  people 
would  be  exhibited  in  that  mode  in  which 
alone  they  can  be  exhibited  justly  —  in  in- 
separable conjunction  and  intermixture.     We 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   207 

would  not  then  have  to  look  for  the  wars  and 
votes  of  the  Puritans  in  Clarendon*  and  for 
their  phraseology  in  Old  Mortality;  for  one 
half  of  King  James  in  Hume,f  and  for  the 
other  half  in  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel." 

Let  us  look  now  at  these  two  paragraphs. 
Whether  one  agrees  with  Macaulay  or  not,  he 
cannot  read  even  this  short  selection  without  \ 
feeling  that  the  great  essayist  illuminated  what- 
ever he  touched.  He  had  ideas  and  he  had  the 
constructive  talent  that  was  needed  to  put  them 
clearly  and  memorably  before  his  readers.  What 
we  want  to  do,  however,  is  not  primarily  to  learn 
facts  frorn  Macaulay  or  Arnold  or  Huxley,  but 
to  learn  "how  to  express  facts.  We  do  not  want 
to  borrow  their  torches,  but  only  to  light  from 
them  our  own  torches.  We  may  never  have  to 
explain  what  they  are  explaining,  but  they  can 

*See  page  186.  The  Earl  of  Clarendon  (1608-1674)  took  the  side  of  Charles 
I  and  Charles  II  and  was  opposed  to  the  Puritans.  In  his  great  work, 
History  of  the  Rebellion  in  England,  while  there  is  a  great  deal  about  the 
Puritans,  he  does  not  attempt  to  imitate  their  "phraseology"  as  Scott  does 
in  Old  Mortality. 

tSee  page  186.  David  Hume  (1711-1776),  author  of  a  History  of  England, 
is  after  Clarendon  the  second  historian  of  England  whose  work  is  marked 
by  a  distinct  charm  of  style.  His  portrayal  of  James  I  is  exceptionally 
brilliant,  but  not  equal  to  that  found  in  Scott's  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel.  "No 
historical  portrait  that  we  possess,"  says  R.  H.  Hutton,  "will  take  prece- 
dence, as  a  mere  portrait,  of  Scott's  brilliant  study  of  James  I." 


208    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

help  us  because  they  illustrate  the  principles  of 
all  explanation  that  is  clear  and  effective. 

To  train  yourself  in  the  mastery  of  language 
by  the  study  of  the  paragraph  two  things  are 
necessary:  First,  find  the  subject  of  the  para- 
graph; second,  build  a  paragraph  of  your  own  with 
the  same  subject,  but  without  having  the  printed 
page  before  you.  Sometimes  you  may  find  it 
difficult  to  find  the  exact  subject  of  a  paragraph; 
if  so,  blame  the  author,  not  yourself.  The  search, 
at  any  rate,  will  prove  an  education  in  accurate 
thinking.  There  is  no  difficulty,  however,  in 
these  two  paragraphs.  The  subject  of  the  first 
is  "The  perfect  historian,"  of  the  second,  "How 
the  perfect  historian  would  write  the  history  of 
England."  The  two  paragraphs  are  admirably 
joined;  the  second  is  naturally  suggested  by  the 
first.  If  Macaulay  had  been  an  American  he 
would  have  taken  as  the  subject  of  his  second 
paragraph,  "How  the  perfect  historian  would 
write  the  history  of  the  United  States."  That, 
however,  is  for  you  to  think  about,  as  indeed  you 
can  hardly  help  doing  if  you  begin  to  think  about 
"The  perfect  historian." 

Perhaps  you  are  a  very  busy  person  and  have 
but    a    few    spare    moments    for    self-training    in 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   209 

language.  Well,  the  paragraph  is  the  best  lan- 
guage-guide a  busy  person  ever  had.  Take  the 
subject  of  the  paragraph  with  you.  Turn  it  over 
and  over.  The  spare  moments  that  you  snatch 
from  your  work  or  that  you  have  in  going  to  and 
from  your  work  are  enough.  Let  the  thought 
grow  in  your  own  soil.  Imagine  that  you  have 
to  write  a  paper  or  make  a  speech  on  the  subject. 
You  will  find  —  I  care  not  what  your  work  may 
be  —  that  new  points  of  view  will  continually  be 
suggested  by  your  surroundings  and  by  what  you 
are  doing.  You  know  a  great  many  things  that 
Macaulay  did  not  know,  and  some  of  these  he 
would  undoubtedly  have  used  if  he  had  known 
them.  Truth  has  no  walls  or  barbed-wire  fences: 
little  truths  and  big  truths  help  each  other  at 
every  turn,  wander  at  will  in  each  other's  territory, 
and  laugh  at  the  boundaries  which  man  thinks 
that  he  has  established.  "The  perfect  historian" 
is  a  big  theme  —  any  theme  is  big  that  has  "per- 
fect" attached  to  it  —  but  after  a  while  you  will 
have  thought  yourself  into  it  and  through  it. 
Then  come  back  to  the  original  paragraph.  How 
does  your  paragraph  compare  with  Macaulay's? 
You  may  think  about  words  and  sentences 
now,  because  you  need  them;  they  are  no  longer 


210   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

unrelated  to  what  you  are  doing.  Are  there  not 
some  words  in  Macaulay's  paragraph  which  you 
did  not  use,  but  which  are  better  than  those  that 
you  did  use?  The  words  "authenticated,"  "selec- 
tion, rejection,  and  arrangement,"  "usurped," 
"elucidate" —  these  perhaps  belong  already  to 
your  knowledge-vocabulary.  Is  not  this  a  good 
time  to  add  them  to  your  power- vocabulary? 
Note  that  fine  trinity  of  words,  "the  court,  the 
camp,  and  the  senate."  Most  writers  would  have 
beat  it  out  into  something  like  "royal  intrigues, 
military  achievements,  and  political  rivalries." 
Did  you  notice  how  fond  Macaulay  is  of  "not  — 
but?"  He  has  done  more  than  any  other  writer 
to  add  clearness  to  explanation  by  the  use  of 
these  two  words. 

Are  your  sentences  as  short  and  direct  as  his? 
Have  you  one  sentence,  as  he  has,  that  includes 
all  the  rest?  Where  did  you  place  it  in  your  para- 
graph? Macaulay  placed  his  most  important 
sentence  first.  This  sentence  is  really  a  definition 
of  "The  perfect  historian,"  the  other  sentences 
being  illustrations  of  the  definition.  But  Macau- 
lay often  places  his  most  important  sentence  near 
the  middle  of  the  paragraph  and  sometimes  at  the 
end.     Try     these     positions     here.     Begin     with 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    211 

"The  perfect  historian  relates  no  fact,  he  attri- 
butes no  expression  to  his  characters  which  is 
not  authenticated  by  sufficient  testimony."  Now 
place  the  omitted  first  sentence  just  before  "He 
shows  us  the  court,  the  camp,  and  the  senate." 
Take  it  out  now  and  place  it  last,  so  that  instead 
of  introducing  the  whole  paragraph  it  will  sum 
up  the  whole  paragraph.  There  is,  as  you  see, 
the  widest  liberty  in  placing  your  most  important 
sentence.  We  are  not  looking  for  rules  —  there 
are  no  rules  —  we  are  looking  for  freedom,  clear- 
ness, naturalness,  and  effectiveness.  You  may 
write  an  excellent  paragraph  that  has  no  most 
important  sentence.  There  is  none  in  the  first 
paragraph  from  Huxley  on  page  217.  Or  you  may 
take  two  sentences  instead  of  one  to  present  the 
substance  of  your  paragraph,  as  Macaulay  does 
in  his  second  paragraph.*  But  Macaulay  usually 
has  one  most  important  sentence,  and  he  usually 
places  it  first. 

Do  not  let  details,  however,  swallow  up  your 
main  purpose.     You  are  taking  the  phrase  "The 

*It  is  often  only  a  question  of  punctuation.  Most  writers  would  have 
written  "But"  with  a  small  letter  and  so  have  thrown  the  two  sentences 
into  one.  Thus:  "If  a  man,  such  as  we  are  supposing,  should  write  the 
history  of  England,  he  would  assuredly  not  omit  the  battles,  the  sieges,  the 
negotiations,  the  seditions,  the  ministerial  changes;  but  with  these  he 
would  intersperse  the  details  which  are  the  charm  of  historical  romances." 


2i2    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

perfect  historian"  and  trying  to  express  your 
thoughts  about  it  so  clearly  that  the  reader  or 
hearer  will  not  only  understand  you  but  cannot 
misunderstand  you.  You  are  using  Macaulay's 
paragraph  not  as  a  perfect  paragraph  but  as  a 
means  of  making  your  own  paragraph  more  com- 
pact and  effective.  You  took  a  paragraph  for 
this  purpose  because  a  paragraph  is  a  whole 
composition  in  miniature.  You  see  also  how 
important  words  and  sentences  are  when  studied 
as  parts  of  a  paragraph.  It  is  not  till  we  begin 
to  fit  sentences  into  paragraphs  that  we  are  in 
a  position  to  judge  of  the  fitness  either  of  sen- 
tences or  of  words. 

FROM    ARNOLD* 

"Faith  in  machinery  is,  I  said,  our  besetting 
danger;  often  in  machinery  most  absurdly 
disproportioned  to.  the  end  which  this  machin- 
ery, if  it  is  to  do  any  good  at  all,  is  to  serve; 
but  always  in  machinery,  as  if  it  had  a  value 
in  and  for  itself.  What  is  freedom  but 
machinery?  <  What  is  population  but  machin- 
ery? What  is  coal  but  machinery?  What 
are  railroads  but  machinery?     WJiat  is  wealth 


^Culture  and  Anarchy,  first  chapter. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    213 

but  machinery?  What  are,  even,  religious 
organizations  but  machinery?  Now  almost 
every  voice  in  England  is  accustomed  to 
speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  precious 
ends  in  themselves,  and  therefore  had  some 
of  the  characters  of  perfection  indisputably 
joined  to  them.  I  have  before  noticed  Mr. 
Roebuck's  stock  argument  for  proving  the 
greatness  and  happiness  of  England  as  she  is, 
and  for  stopping  the  mouths  of  all  gainsayers. 
Mr.  Roebuck  is  never  weary  of  reiterating 
this  argument  of  his,  so  I  do  not  know  why 
I  should  be  weary  of  noticing  it.  'May  not 
every  man  in  England  say  what  he  likes?' 
—  Mr.  Roebuck  perpetually  asks;  and  that, 
he  thinks,  is  quite  sufficient,  and  when  every 
man  may  say  what  he  likes  our  aspirations 
ought  to  be  satisfied.  But  the  aspirations 
of  culture,  which  is  the  study  of  perfection, 
are  not  satisfied,  unless  what  men  say,  when 
they  may  say  what  they  like,  is  worth  say- 
ing —  has  good  in  it,  and  more  good  than 
bad.  In  the  same  way  the  Times,  replying 
to  some  foreign  strictures  on  the  dress,  looks, 
and  behavior  of  the  English  abroad,  urges 
that  the  English  ideal  is  that  every  one  should 


214    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

be  free  to  do  and  to  look  just  as  he  likes.  But 
culture  indefatigably  tries,  not  to  make  what 
each  raw  person  may  like  the  rule  by  which 
he  fashions  himself;  but  to  draw  ever  nearer 
to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed  beautiful,  graceful, 
and  becoming,  and  to  get  the  raw  person  to 
like  that. 

"And  in  the  same  way  with  respect  to 
railroads  and  coal.  Every  one  must  have 
observed  the  strange  language  current  during 
the  late  discussions  as  to  the  possible  failures 
of  our  supplies  of  coal.  Our  coal,  thousands 
of  people  were  saying,  is  the  real  basis  of  our 
national  greatness;  if  our  coal  runs  short, 
there  is  an  end  of  the  greatness  of  England. 
But  what  is  greatness?  —  culture  makes  us 
ask.  Greatness  is  a  spiritual  condition  worthy 
to  excite  love,  interest,  and  admiration;  and 
the  outward  proof  of  possessing  greatness  is 
that  we  excite  love,  interest,  and  admiration. 
If  England  were  swallowed  up  by  the  sea 
to-morrow,  which  of  the  two,  a  hundred  years 
hence,  would  most  excite  the  love,  interest, 
and  admiration  of  mankind  —  would  most, 
therefore,  show  the  evidences  of  having  pos- 
sessed  greatness  —  the  England  of  the  last 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    215 

twenty  years,  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth, 
of  a  time  of  splendid  spiritual  effort,  but  when 
our  coal,  and  our  industrial  operations  de- 
pending on  coal,  were  very  little  developed? 
Well,  then,  what  an  unsound  habit  of  mind 
it  must  be  which  makes  us  talk  of  things  like 
coal  or  iron  as  constituting  the  greatness  of 
England,  and  how  salutary  a  friend  is  culture, 
bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  thus 
dissipating  delusions  of  this  kind  and  fixing 
standards  of  perfection  that  are  real!" 

Arnold  is  on  very  familiar  ground  here.  He  is 
talking  about  culture,  and  no  one  of  his  generation 
thought  so  persistently  about  culture  as  he  or 
succeeded  in  making  his  views  prevail  so  widely. 
His  manner  is  wholly  different  from  Macaulay's. 
Arnold  likes  to  define  in  few  words  the  problem 
he  is  discussing,  and  then  to  repeat  the  definition 
so  often  that  you  cannot  help  remembering  it.  He 
has  said  time  and  again  that  "culture  is  the  study 
of  perfection"  but  finds  a  chance  of  repeating  it 
in  our  first  paragraph.  When  he  defines  greatness 
in  our  second  paragraph  as  "a  spiritual  condition 
worthy  to  excite  love,  interest,  and  admiration," 
he  repeats  the  words  "love,  interest,  and  admira- 


c 


216    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

tion"  till  you  can  hardly  help  associating  greatness 
with  "love,  interest,  and  admiration."  These 
two  methods,  definition  and  repetition,  are  power- 
ful weapons,  and  Arnold  is  our  best  teacher  in 
their  use. 

The  subject  of  the  first  paragraph  is  "  Culture 
versus  machinery,"  of  the  second  "Culture  versus 
coal."  The  two  paragraphs  are  well  joined,  the 
second  being  a  continuation  of  the  thought  of 
the  first;  but  they  are  not  so  compact  as  Macau- 
lay's.  Instead  of  filling  his  paragraph  with  short 
jinging  statements,  Arnold  likes  to  ask  questions 
jmd  then  answer  them.  You  and  he  seem  to 
be  talking  leisurely  about  the  subject  together. 
There  is  always  in  Arnold's  pages  this  suggestion 
of  leisurely  well-bred  conversation.  It  is  very  ef- 
fective, but  it  is  a  looser  method  than  Macaulay's. 
Macaulay  is  a  hard  downpour,  Arnold  a  slow 
drizzle;  but  you  will  get  just  as  soaked  by  the  one 
as  by  the  other.  Each  method  brings  out  a  new 
resource  in  the  effective  use  of  language.  If  you 
will  carry  the  two  seed-thoughts,  "Culture  versus 
machinery"  and  "Culture  versus  coal,"  around 
with  you  for  a  few  days  and  then  compare  your 
two  paragraphs  with  Arnold's,  you  will  have  added 
power  and  method  to  your  use  of  English. 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME   217 

FROM    HUXLEY* 

"That  man,  I  think,  has  had  a  liberal 
education  who  has  been  so  trained  in  youth 
that  his  body  is  the  ready  servant  of  his  will, 
and  does  with  ease  and  pleasure  all  the  work 
that,  as  a  mechanism,  it  is  capable  of;  whose 
intellect  is  a  clear,  cold,  logic  engine,  with  all 
its  parts  of  equal  strength,  and  in  smooth 
working  order;  ready,  like  a  steam  engine, 
to  be  turned  to  any  kind  of  work,  and  spin 
the  gossamers  as  well  as  forge  the  anchors 
of  the  mind;  whose  mind  is  stored  with  a 
knowledge  of  the  great  and  fundamental 
truths  of  Nature  and  of  the  laws  of  her  opera- 
tions; one  who,  no  stunted  ascetic,  is  full  of 
life  and  fire,  but  whose  passions  are  trained 
to  come  to  heel  by  a  vigorous  will,  the  servant 
of  a  tender  conscience;  who  has  learned  to 
love  all  beauty,  whether  of  Nature  or  of  art, 
to  hate  all  vileness,  and  to  respect  others  as 
himself. 

"  Such  an  one  and  no  other,  I  conceive,  has 
had  a  liberal  education;  for  he  is,  as  com- 
pletely as  a  man  can  be,  in  harmony  with 
Nature.     He  will  make  the  best  of  her,  and 


*A  Liberal  Education:  and  where  to  find  it. 


2i8    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

she  of  him.  They  will  get  on  together  rarely; 
she  as  his  ever  beneficent  mother;  he  as  her 
mouthpiece,  her  conscious  self,  her  minister 
and  interpreter." 

"A  liberally  educated  man"  and  "Why?"— 
these  words  indicate  the  topics  of  the  two  para- 
graphs. The  first  is  a  famous  paragraph,  famous 
for  its  breadth,  clearness,  force,  and  beauty.  The 
second  paragraph  clinches  the  first  by  telling  us 
that  our  liberally  educated  man  is,  after  all,  only 
"in  harmony  with  Nature."  That,  says  Huxley, 
is  the  supreme  test.  But  the  two  paragraphs  are 
perfect  examples  of  clear  thought  and  of  effective 
method.  Huxley  is  talking  about  a  liberal  edu- 
cation. Macaulay  would  have  said:  "A  liberal 
education  is  an  education  which" —  and,  like  a 
train  of  captives  behind  a  triumphal  car,  there 
would  have  followed  a  brilliant  series  of  "which" 
clauses  telling  us  what  a  liberal  education  does. 
An  admirable  method  for  Macaulay  and  for  all 
those  who  have  learned  to  drive  a  long  line  of 
"which"  clauses  with  a  sure  hand  on  the  reins 
and  a  sure  eye  on  the  goal.  Arnold  would  have 
defined  a  liberal  education  in  a  few  carefully  chosen 
abstract  words  like  "conduct,"  "disinterestedness," 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    219 

"sweetness  and  light,"  "love,  interest,  and  ad- 
miration," and  would  then  have  repeated  the 
definition  so  adroitly  that,  whether  you  liked 
it  or  not,  you  would  have  to  carry  it  with  you. 
An  admirable  method  for  Arnold  and  for  all  those 
who  have  learned  to  make  new  pathways  for 
thought  out  of  abstract  terms.  Huxley  defines  a 
liberal  education  in  terms  of  a  liberally  educated 
man.  He  says:  "Let's  not  talk  about  an  ab- 
straction, something  that  we  cannot  see  or  touch 
or  sympathize  with.  Let's  talk  about  a  man." 
Immediately  you  begin  to  test  yourself  and  others 
by  this  liberally  educated  man.  You  take  stock 
of  your  own  "body,"  "intellect,"  "mind,"  "pas- 
sions." You  are  thinking  very  intently  about  a 
liberal  education,  but  you  are  looking  not  at  a 
word  ending  in  "ation"  but  at  a  human  being. 

Try  this  method  now  with  other  abstract  sub- 
jects. Instead  of  attempting  to  explain  to  people 
your  ideal  of  a  practical  education,  give  them 
your  idea  of  the  man  who  has  had  a  practical 
education.  Instead  of  talking  about  patriotism, 
illiteracy,  honesty,  statesmanship,  efficiency,  as 
shadows,  talk  about  them  first  as  folks.  Your 
thought  will  flow  more  freely  and  will  go  into 
many  more  hidden  corners  of  your  subject.     Then 


22o   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

go  back  to  Huxley  and  see  if  there  is  not  still 
more  to  learn.  Are  your  divisions  as  clear-cut 
as  his?  Are  your  words  as  pictorial?  "Mechan- 
ism," "logic  engine,"  "steam  engine,"  "gossamers," 
"anchors,"  "stunted  ascetic,"  "trained  to  come  to 
heel" —  do  not  these  words  picture  the  thought 
better  than  the  words  you  have  used? 

Sentences,  then,  like  bananas,  grow  in  bunches. 
These  bunches  are  paragraphs.  As  the  shape 
of  each  banana  is  partly  determined  by  its  place 
in  the  bunch,  so  the  build  of  each  sentence  will 
depend  upon  what  it  has  to  do  in  the  paragraph. 
And  this  is  true  of  the  paragraph  that  narrates 
as  well  as  of  the  paragraph  that  explains.  Each 
has  a  unity  of  its  own,  but  each  is  part  of  a  larger 
unity,  the  unity  of  the  whole  essay  or  of  the  whole 
story.  To  study  any  sort  of  paragraph  we  must 
catch  it  by  its  stem,  its  subject,  and  hold  it  up. 
As  we  look  at  it  thus  hanging  down,  we  can  judge 
of  the  fitness  of  its  parts  and  learn  how  to  make 
our  own  paragraphs  hang  well  together. 

A  word  now  about  the  narrative  paragraph  as 
found  in  the  short  story.  You  are  so  familiar 
with  Irving's  Rip  Van  Winkle  that  it  is  needless 
to  quote  in  full  any  paragraphs  frqm  it  for  nar- 
rative exercise.     Let  me  give,  however,  the  begin- 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    221 

nings  and  topics  of  two  paragraphs  in  this  story, 
the  one  following  the  other:  (1)  "On  awakening, 
he  found  himself  on  the  green  knoll  from  whence 
he  had  first  seen  the  old  man  of  the  glen."  (2) 
"He  looked  round  for  his  gun,  but  in  place  of  the 
clean,  well-oiled  fowling  piece,  he  found  an  old 
firelock  lying  by  him,  the  barrel  incrusted  with 
rust,  the  lock  failing  off,  and  the  stock  worm- 
eaten."  The  topics  of  the  two  paragraphs  begin- 
ning with  these  sentences  are  (1)  "What  Rip  first 
thought  on  awakening"  and  (2)  "What  Rip  first 
did  on  awakening."  Can  you  complete  these  two 
paragraphs  without  referring  to  the  story?  If 
not,  read  the  story  once  more,  then  write  out  your 
own  paragraphs  and  compare  them  with  Irving's. 
Have  you  not  left  out  something?  This  is  a  very 
important  part  of  the  story.  If  you  do  not  grip 
the  attention  of  the  reader  from  the  very  moment 
that  Rip  wakes,  you  will  not  get  it  later  on. 
Irving  succeeds  by  putting  himself  in  Rip's  place 
and  imagining  what  a  poor  fellow  would  think 
and  then  what  he  would  do  in  his  first  efforts  to 
right  himself  in  such  baffling  surroundings.  It  is 
all  very  simple,  but  it  is  all  very  fine  art.  Every 
paragraph  is  pointing  and  moving  now  toward 
something  decisive  that  will  happen  a  little  later 


V 


222    WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

on.  Rip  is  stumbling  up  a  steeper  mountain  now 
than  before,  but  at  the  top  of  it  he  will  find  com- 
plete recognition  and  happy  restoration.  Get  the 
paragraph  topics  well  in  hand  and  with  book 
closed  see  if  you  can  lead  Rip  up  and  out  as 
connectedly  and  as  interestingly  as  Irving  has 
done.  If  not,  where  did  you  omit  something  that 
ought  to  have  been  put  in,  and  where  did  you  put 
in  something  that  does  not  fit?  Perhaps  you 
omitted  nothing  essential  as  far  as  the  skeleton 
of  the  story  is  concerned,  and  yet  you  are  aware 
that  your  story  lacks  charm  and  vividness.  Con- 
gratulate yourself.  To  feel  the  incompleteness 
of  your  story  in  these  finer  details  is  an  achieve- 
ment that  points  pretty  surely  to  larger  triumphs 
yet  to  be. 

In  conclusion,  then,  take  a  few  great  essays  and 
a  few  great  stories  and  use  them  as  guides,  as 
companions,  in  finding  and  training  the  best  that 
is  in  you  of  explanation  and  narration.  Take  a 
whole  essay  and  a  whole  story.  Pit  yourself 
against  the  author,  but  do  not  confine  yourself 
to  a  particular  author.  Aim  at  a  habit  —  the 
habit  of  constructive  reading,  which  means  con- 
structive thinking  and  constructive  writing.  Read, 
if  possible,  a  whole  essay  or  a  whole  story  at  a 


WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME    223 

sitting.  Then  turn  to  the  paragraphs.  Read 
them  carefully,  string  them  by  their  topics,  take 
one  or  more  of  these  topics  with  you  in  your  work, 
think  through  them,  put  flesh  on  them,  weigh 
them  now  in  the  scales  of  the  originals,  and  try 
again.  If  a  paragraph  leads  you  into  strange 
realms  of  thought,  go  with  it  cheerfully;  it  doubt-  % 
less  gave  its  author  a  rarer  chase  than  it  is  giving 
you.  Remember  that  the  supreme  teacher  of 
literature  and  of  language  is  literature  itself.  As 
soon  as  you  part  company  with  handbooks  and 
establish  a  teacher-and-pupil  relation  with  the 
masters  themselves,  you  are  drinking  at  the  origi- 
nal source.  You  have  exchanged  the  spigot  for 
the  fountain,  and  every  page  will  mean  power 
Tand  mastery.  — —1 

Literature  can  thus  become~an""outIet  not  onlyV 
to  your  unspoken  thoughts  and  moods  but  to  the  . 
choked  passage-way  of  your  own  speech,  through 
which  your  thoughts  and  moods  have  tried  to 
pass;  it  can  keep  before  you  the  vision  of  the  ideal 
not  only  in  the  dreams  of  great  idealists  but  in 
the  shining  structures  in  which  their  dreams  have 
found  sanctuary;  it  can  give  you  a  better  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature  not  only  as  human  nature 
is  stored  in  human  deeds  but  as  it  is  stored  in  the 


224   WHAT  CAN  LITERATURE  DO  FOR  ME 

varied  forms  of  language  that  express  human 
deeds;  it  can  restore  the  past  to  you  not  only  as 
the  past  lives  in  the  vanished  centuries  but  as  it 
is  crystallized  in  the  speech  of  those  who  gave 
character  and  direction  to  the  vanished  centuries  \, 
and  it  can  show  you  the  glory  of  the  commonplace 
not  only  in  the  common  things  about  you  but  in* 
the  commonest  words  through  which  the  glory 
of  the  commonplace  is  flashed  upon  you. 

THE    END 


/' 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Addison,  Joseph,  190. 

Allen,  A.  V.  G.,  188 

Arnold,  Matthew,  137,  190, 
196,  197,  198,  199,  201, 
202,  207,  212,  215,  216, 
219 

Bacon,  Francis,  190 
Bagehot,  Walter,  88 
Balzac,  101 
Bancroft,  George,  186 
Bayne,  Peter,  109 
Besant,  Walter,  17,  105 
Blackwell,  Basil  H.,  196 
Boccaccio,  80 

Boker,   George   Henry,    186 
Boswell,  James,  188,  189 
Bronson,  Walter  C,  196 
Browning,     Elizabeth     Bar- 
rett, 159 
Browning,    Robert,    36,    37, 
43,  47,  52,  56,  76,  102,  106, 
153,  .173,  176,  181 
Brunetiere,  Ferdinand,  86 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  20, 

68,  75,  100 
Bulwer-Lytton,  148 
Bunyan,  John,  17 
Burke,  Edmund,i6,  188 
Burns,  Robert,  32,  132,  134, 

166,  174,  180 
Burton,  J.  H.,  133 


Campbell,  Thomas,  32,   133 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  13,  15,  70, 

182 
Cary,  H.  F.  16,  75 
Caxton,  William,  79 
Cervantes,  Miguel  de,  75,  83, 

85,  86,  87 
Chambers,  Robert,  13 
Church,  Alfred  J.,  75 
Cicero,  16,  189 
Clarendon,  Earl  of,  186,  207 
Coleridge,     Samuel    Taylor, 

10,  n,  12,93,  157,  180,  184 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  75, 

99,  100,  101,  102,  117,  192 
Cowper,    William,    32,    133, 

173 

Dante,  Alighieri,  75,  80,"  81, 

82 
Darwin,  Charles,  42 
Dawson,  Coningsby  W.,  196 
Dawson,   William  J.,    196 
Defoe,  Daniel,  13,  75,  92,  95 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  27 
Dickens,     Charles,     73,     76, 

107,  108,  109,   148,  192 
Douglas,  William,  132 
Dowden,  Edward,  101 
Doyle,  Francis  Hastings,  126 
Dryden,  John,  91 
Dumas,  Alexander,  134 


225 


226 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Eliot,  Charles  W.,  48,  148 

Eliot,  George,  73,  76,  no, 
112,  192 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  8, 
9,  27,  48,  52,  55,  60,  61, 
92,  104,  135,  136,  181,191 

Engel,  Eduard,  47,  49 

Euripides,  159 

Everett,  Edward,  6,  7,  156 

Ferrier,  J.  F.,  155 
Field,  Eugene,  70 
Fielding,  Henry,  93 
Finch,     Francis    Miles,     70, 

168,  169 
Fiske,  John,  187 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  158 
Forster,  John,  108 
Foster,  Stephen  Collins,  118 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  99,  172, 

173,  189 
Froude  J.  A.,  186 
Furness,  Horace  Howard,  73 

Gairdner,  James,  146 
Gibbon,  Edward,  186 
Gladstone,   William   E.,    126 
Goethe,  75,  95,  98,  99,  121, 

148,  158,  181,  198 
Gray,  Thomas,  180 
Green,  J.  R.,  186 

Haggard,  Rider,  19 
Hallam,  Arthur  Henry,  126, 

127,  128,  129 
Hallam,  Henry,  126 
Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,   185 
Hamerton,   Philip  Gilbert, 

19,  20 


Harris,    Joel    Chandler,    76, 

99,  117,  118 
Harte,  Bret,    192 
Hawthorne,    Nathaniel,    17, 

48,  64,  67,   135,   160,   175, 

176,    192 
Hay,  John,  132 
Hayne,  Robert  Y.,  188 
Henderson,  Archibald,  42 
Henneman  John  B.,  33 
Hinton,  Charles  S.,  45 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  26, 

48,  57,  58,  59,  160 
Homer,  75,  76,  119,  183-,  184 
Hood,  Thomas,   90 
Houghton,  Lord,   126 
Hugo,  Victor,    76,    113,  114, 

117,  134 
Hume,  David,  186,  207 
Hutton,  R.  H,  207 
Huxley,  Thomas  H.,  94,  190, 

196,    197,    199,    201,    202, 

207,    211,    217,    218,    219, 

220 

Irving,  Washington,  99,  189, 
192,  220,  221,  222 

Jebb,  R.  C,  76 
Johnson,  Charles  F.,  74 
Johnson,  Clifton,  75 
Johnson,  Samuel,   192 
Jonson,  Ben,  93 
Jowett,  Benjamin,   15 

Keats,  John,  173 

Kelvin,  Lord,  see  Thomson, 

Sir  William   '' 
Key,  Francis  Scott,  70,  168 
Kingsley,  Charles,  148 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


227 


Kipling,    Rudyard,    39,    47, 
160,161,174,175,  183,  192 
Kuhns,  Oscar,  75 

Lamb.  Charles,  132,  190 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  132 
Lang,  Andrew,  75 
Lanier,   Sidney,   48,   61,  64, 

75,  97,  no,  160 
Lee,  Robert  E.,  190 
Lincoln,  Abraham  3,  4,  6,  7, 

21,  156,  I90 

Lockhart,  J.  G.,  150,  188 
Long,  Augustus  White,  32 
Longfellow,     Henry     Wads- 
worth,  24,  33,  47,  48,  49, 
51,  52,  55,  60,  63,  64,  82, 
97,  137,  138,  184,  186 
Longfellow,  Samuel,  188 
Lounsbury,  Thomas,  R.,  189 
Lowell,    James    Russell,    48, 

55,  56,  57,  135,  157,  171, 
180,  191 

Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
ton,  29,  75,  186,  190,  196, 
197,    198,    199,    201,    202, 
204,    207,    208,    209,    210, 
211,  212,  215,  216,  218 
Mackintosh,  John,  133 
Makower,   Stanley  V.,   196 
Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  75,  79 
Markham,   Edwin,    174 
Mark  Twain,  99,  192 
Marshall,   John,    188 
Matthews,   Brander,   33 
Milton,  John,  31,  132,  184 
Mitchill,  Samuel  L.,  59 
Montaigne,  151 
Moore,  Clement  Clarke,  184 


More,  Thomas,  202 
Morley,  John,  188 
Motley,  J.  L.,  187,  189 
Motteux,  Peter  Anthony,  75 
Moulton,  Richard  G.,  90 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  42 

O'Hara,  Theodore,  70 

O.  Henry,  192 

Orr,  Mrs.  Sutherland,  102 

Palgrave,  Francis  T.,  32 

Parkman,  Francis,   187,   189 

Payne,  John  Howard,  70,  180 

Plato,   15,   16 

Plutarch,    141,   143 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  48,  51,  53, 

54,  180,  192 
Prescott,  W.  H.,  186 

Quiller-Couch,  Arthur,  32 

Reade,  Charles,  148 
Rhys,  John,  75 
Rontgen,  W.  K.,  45 
Rosebery,  Lord,  105 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  94 

St.  Paul,  64,  189 

Schoolcraft,  Henry  Rowe,  60 

Scott,  Walter,  13,  19,  20,  32, 
101,  102,  134,  140,  147, 
148,  149,  150,  151,  192,  206 

Shakespeare,  William,  17,  18, 
21,  22,  25,  26,  42,  46,  73, 
74,  75,  86,  87,  88,  90,  91, 
103,  140,  141,  142,  143, 
144,  146,  147,  148,  149, 
150,  151,  176,  185 


221 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,   163, 

164,  165 
Smith,  Samuel  Francis,  70 
Sophocles,  93 
Southey,  Robert,  188 
Spenser,  Edmund,  17 
Stead,  W.  T.,  21,  22 
Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence, 

33 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  17, 

192 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  99, 

118 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  15 


Taney,  R.  B.,  168 

Taylor,  Bayard,  75 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  29,  32,  33, 
38,  43,  44,  47,  63,  75,  79, 
96,  99,  126,  127,  128,  159, 
160,  174 


Thackeray,   William   Make- 
peace,   73,    76,    104,    105, 
106,  108,  122,  148,  192 
Thomas,  F.  W.,  54 
Thomson,  Sir  William,  45,  46 
Thoreau,  Henry  David,  92 
Ticknor,  Francis  O.,  129,  130 
Trent,  William  P.,  33 
Trevelyan,  G.  O.,   188 
Trollope,  Anthony,  106 
Tuckerman,  C.  K.,  51 
Tyndall,  John,  42 

Verne,  Jules,  44 
Virgil,  184 

Webster,  Daniel,  188 
Whittier,     John     Greenleaf, 

48,  -59,  61,  138,  174 
Words  vvorth,.     William,     20, 

26,  in,  132,  137,  159,  160, 

162,  164,  165,  173 


/' 


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